THE MORGAN TO PRESENT TWENTY-SIX WORKS
AS PART OF ITS ONGOING DISPLAY OF
HIGHLIGHTS FROM ITS PERMANENT COLLECTIONS

 WORKS ON VIEW INCLUDE LETTERS BY NAPOLEON, SALINGER, AND DICKENS; CENTURIES-OLD ILLUMINATED MANUSCRIPTS; AND MUSICAL SCORES BY BRAHMS, SCHUBERT, MAHLER, AND DEBUSSY

 
New York, NY, September 10, 2012—The Morgan Library & Museum will continue its collection highlights series this fall with a display of twenty-six diverse works. The objects, which will go on view Tuesday, September 11, 2012 in the museum’s sumptuous 1906 McKim building, represent the Morgan’s exceptional collections of medieval manuscripts, printed books and bindings, private letters and correspondence, and original music. The works will remain on view through January 12, 2013.

HIGHLIGHTS

Johann Hartlieb (fl. 1450)
Die Kunst Ciromantia
Augsburg: Jörg Schapf, ca. 1475

Throughout the medieval and early modern eras, the hand represented a microcosm of the body and mind. Diagrams of hands like this one were sometimes used in books on palmistry (known as chiromancy). This is one of three known copies of the second edition of The Art of Chiromancy, the first printed book on divining an individual’s character and fate by palm reading. In this work, the woodblock-printed right hand represents a man, the left, a woman.

Walt Whitman (1819–1892)
Signed copy of O Captain! My Captain!

Whitman’s poem of mourning over the assassination of President Lincoln became extremely popular at the time of its first publication in 1865. In 1890, ailing and in need of funds, the poet wrote out this copy of his work for the distinguished Philadelphia physician, poet, and novelist Dr. S. Weir Mitchell, who paid him $100 for it.

Hours of Hawisia DuBois, in Latin and French
England, Oxford, ca. 1325–30

This grand fourteenth-century prayer book—four times larger than a typical Book of Hours from its era—was painstakingly illuminated with both silver and gold. Kneeling on either side of the Archangel Michael are Hawisia DuBois and her husband. Hawisia’s position on God’s right side marks her as the patron of the book.

Gustav Mahler (1860–1911)
Drafts of “Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen,” 1901

Mahler spent his summers in the peaceful Austrian lake country where he could flee the hustle and bustle of Vienna and devote himself to composing. It was here, during the summer of 1901, that he worked on the two successive compositional drafts for voice and piano on view. The completed version was published in 1905 as part of the composer’s Rückert-Lieder song cycle.

The Whole Workes of W. Tyndall, Iohn Frith, and Doct. Barnes
London: John Day, 1572–73
Bound by the MacDurnan Gospels Bindery, 1573 

The royal arms appear on the front cover of this splendid binding, a presentation copy to Queen Elizabeth I. Produced at a London workshop known as the MacDurnan Gospels Bindery, the book contains the writings of scripture translator William Tyndale and two other prominent Protestant martyrs. The gift was no doubt intended to secure royal favor and aristocratic patronage for John Day and John Foxe, the printer and editor.

 Charles Dickens (1812–1870)
Letter to Angela Burdett-Coutts, February 19, 1856 

Even the prolific Charles Dickens was occasionally haunted by writer’s block. Unable to make progress with the sixth monthly installment of Little Dorrit, Dickens wrote this letter to his friend Angela Burdett-Coutts, describing how he was reduced to “Prowling about the rooms, sitting down, getting up, stirring the fire, looking out of [the] window, tearing my hair, sitting down to write, writing nothing, writing something and tearing it up, going out, coming in, a Monster to my family, a dread Phenomomon [sic] to myself.”

ALSO ON VIEW

Literary and Historical Manuscripts

John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough’s letter to Queen Anne, March 27, 1711
Thomas Hardy’s postcard to W. P. H. Warner, October 15, 1926
Gilbert du Motier, marquis de Lafayette’s letter to Thomas Jefferson, July 4, 1812
Napoleon I’s letter to Empress Josephine, May 13, 1796
J.D. Salinger’s letter to Michael Mitchell, June 25, 1982

Printed Books and Bindings

A Primer, for the Use of Mohawk Children, 1786
Lord Byron’s Fugitive Pieces, 1806
The New-England Primer, 1823
A note of ye names and armes of the five conquerors of this famous Island called Englande, seventeenth century
Vitruvius Pollio’s De Architectura, 1511

Johannes Brahms’s Hungarian Dances, nos. 1–10, for piano four hands, 1868
Claude Debussy’s “Les Parfumes de la nuit” from Ibéria, 1908
Jules Massenet’s “Adieu, notre petite table” from Manon, 1882
New Yankee Doodle, 1798
Franz Schubert’s Erlkönig, after 1815


Illuminated Manuscripts

Book of Hours, in Latin, ca. 1530–35
Encomium on the Four Bodiless Beasts, in Coptic, 892-93
Gospel Lectionary, in Latin, 1070–90
Life, Passion, and Miracles of St. Edmund, in Latin, ca. 1130
Francesco Petrarca’s Le cose volgari di Messer Francesco Petrarcha, 1501