A Chill in the Air:
A Wintry Mix from Special Collections
an Exhibition
December 1, 2011 - December 23, 2011
curated by
Maureen Cech
Winter is the time for comfort, for good food and warmth, for the touch of a friendly hand and for a talk beside the fire: it is the time for home.
~Edith Sitwell
As nature retreats, temperatures fall, and days grow short, winter’s extremes inspire artists and writers alike. More than any other, too, the winter season brings friends and families together. Enjoy a selection of printed works from Special Collections that highlights the beauty of the season.
Snow–Bound: A Winter Idyl. With drawings by Howard Pyle, John J. Enneking & Edmund H. Garrett. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1906.
American Quaker poet John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–1892) is counted among the Fireside Poets, a circle of nineteenth–century New England poets, which included Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., William Cullen Bryant and James Russell Lowell, who first rivaled the popularity of British poets. Snow–Bound is a long narrative poem that describes a New England family during a blizzard and the stories they share to pass the time. The work achieved great popularity, the volume selling some 20,000 copies when it was first published in 1866. This beautiful edition features illustrations by illustrator and native Delawarean Howard Pyle (1853–1911) and Edmund Garrett (1853–1929); Adrian J. Iorio designed the cover and many of the volume’s decorations. Shown here is the 1906 edition’s frontispiece, John J. Whittier’s Ancestor’s Homestead (1890), by American impressionist John J. Enneking (1841–1916).
A Winter Walk. With color woodcuts by Michael Alpert. Bangor, Maine: Theodore Press/Sarah Books, 1991.
Thoreau’s essay “A Winter Walk” recounts the events of a day–long journey through the winter landscape around his Concord, Massachusetts, home. This fine press edition of the essay was set from the text of the essay’s first publication in the October 1843 issue of The Dial and incorporates Thoreau’s corrections and revisions found in his own annotated copy of the journal.
Winter White. [Wenatchee, Wash.]: Mystical Places Press, 2004.
This mini-book features photographs of winter scenes from a variety of locales. Arranged into sections for ice, frost, and snow, the volume features both a custom box and translucent paper imbued with sparkles, a clear binding reminiscent of ice.
