Author Archives: Jeffrey Makala

About Jeffrey Makala

The Irvin Department of Rare Books & Special Collections is located in the Ernest F. Hollings Special Collections Library at the University of South Carolina. The department preserves and makes accessible rare materials and special research collections supporting teaching and research across a wide range of disciplines.

Our new catalog is here!

  We’ve just received the first copies of our latest exhibition catalog, Beyond Domesticity, U.S. Women Writers, 1770-1915. The exhibition, mounted earlier this year, was curated by English faculty members Katherine Adams and Cynthia Davis, with assistance from Sarah Conlon … Continue reading

Posted in American literature, Exhibitions, Women authors | Leave a comment

Rediscovering Audubon’s Birds of America Prospectus

After recently reading about a prospectus for Audubon’s Birds of America that was discovered bound into a copy of his Ornithological Biography, I looked into our holdings to see if we had a copy. The Ornithological Biography is a 5-volume … Continue reading

Posted in Archival collections, Natural history | Leave a comment

Cold Mountain screenplay archive

We’ve just purchased this small collection of scripts and film production memos relating to the 2002 filming of Charles Frazier’s Cold Mountain. Frazier received his Ph.D. in English here at USC before his writing career took off, and Cold Mountain, … Continue reading

Posted in American literature, Archival collections, Film and media studies | Leave a comment

Two (not unrelated) anniversaries this month

It’s certainly worth noting that June 14 marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of Harriet Beecher Stowe. Uncle Tom’s Cabin was the best selling novel of the 19th century and remains critical to anyone interested in 19th century America. … Continue reading

Posted in American literature, Book collections, Women authors | Leave a comment

L’Annee Hippique; Or, A Host of Sporting Books

We’ve just received the second of two large gifts of books on horses, equestrianism, and field sports from a good friend of our library, Mrs. Janet Harkins of Aiken, SC. Her late husband, William D. “Billy” Haggard III, was an … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

A Burns gift book, in a Mauchline Ware binding

We’ve recently been given a small, handsome,  Scottish gift book by G. Ross Roy to add to his collection of Robert Burns, Burnsiana, and Scottish Literature. It’s a collection of Burns’s songs printed in Mauchline, Ayrshire (not far from the … Continue reading

Posted in Archival collections, Book collections, Robert Burns | Leave a comment

“Can we explain the appearance of life upon this planet in terms of science, or only, as in the past, in terms of theology?”

A John Burroughs Manuscript John Burroughs (1837-1921), the naturalist, environmental writer, and first biographer of Walt Whitman, continues to play an important role in American writing on nature. Over the course of his long life, he wrote intimately and expansively … Continue reading

Posted in American literature, Archival collections, John Burroughs, Photos | Leave a comment

A New Exhibition, with Audio

We’ve just installed “Beyond Domesticity: U.S. Women Writers, 1770-1915,” our first major show in our new gallery. It was curated by Katherine Adams and Cynthia Davis, two English department faculty members, and is a broad – and deep – survey … Continue reading

Posted in American literature, Book collections, Exhibitions, Women authors | Leave a comment

A New Acquisition: William Blake’s Illustrations to Robert Blair’s The Grave

William Blake, 1757-1827. William Blake’s Watercolour Inventions in Illustration of The Grave by Robert Blair. Edited with Essays and Commentary by Martin Butlin and an Essay on the Poem by Morton D. Paley. Lavenham, Suffolk: The William Blake Trust, 2009. … Continue reading

Posted in Book collections, Robert Blair, William Blake | Leave a comment

A Collection of E.D.E.N. Southworth

We’ve recently acquired a collection of the works of American author E.D.E.N. Southworth (1819-1899). Active in the latter half of the nineteenth century, “Mrs. Southworth” was the author of some 60 popular novels that were as widely read as the … Continue reading

Posted in American literature, Book collections, Women authors | Leave a comment