Happy October (Island)!

October Island by William March.  First Edition, Little Brown and Co., 1952.

March's sixth novel, published in 1952, did not receive the same critical praise as some of his earlier works.  Some did like the novel, like the New York Times critic, Charles Poore, who praises March's "novel of salt and savor" full of "quiet, uninsistent irony" and his "mordant undertones of commentary on what it truly means to be an outcast."  But we love it, and we love our William March all the same.  And we really love this dust jacket, which is full of mid-century style. Happy October.

Tell us your favortite Southern Novel!

A Tennessee Judge: A Novel, by Opie Read (Chicago: Laird and Lee, 1893).

It probably isn't this page turner by Opie Read, but we have it the Hoole! Please send us a note with your favorite Southern novel, and tell us why you think it's cool, and who knows, we might just exhibit it in our new exhibit - FAVORITE SOUTHERN NOVELS!

We also welcome your information about Alabama authors, new and old! Send me an email at jlfeldma@ua.edu if you know of an author that we might not yet be aware of!

Exhibit Mashup No. 1: Dickens meets Goetzel meets the WPA

A new exhibit will be on display in the lobby of the Hoole Library beginning next week, which features some incredible little artifacts in our collections. These figurines were created as part of the WPA-funded project, the Alabama Visual Education Program.

The Alabama Visual Education Project came out of cooperation between The State Department of Education and the Visual Education Project of the Work Projects Administration. It provided a way for public schools in Alabama to purchase high quality visual aids for education purposes at a low cost. Some of these items are now housed in the Hoole Special Collections Library, including a catalog from 1940 listing items which were available for purchase by Alabama public schools. Also included in the collection are the instructional books Flags, Seals, and Coat of Arms of Alabama published in 1939 and History of Western Costume: prehistoric through nineteenth century, published in the 1930’s and featuring 114 full color plates with detailed descriptions.

We have chosen to exhibit this set of beautifully carved and painted wooden figures depicting characters from Charles Dickens novels. It is understood that decades ago, this set was used for teaching/visual aids by UA's English Department. Also created was a set of Shakespeare figures and Chaucer figures, but only two of the other figures are part of the Hoole Collections.

These tiny figures taken from Charles Dickens' novels and the hand-made wooden storage boxes are compelling and unique items to behold. The Hoole Library also holds a scale model of Shakespeare's Globe Theater, which was created as part of this project.

This exhibit features just the Dickens characters, as well as some of Dickens' works housed at the Hoole Library, as well as images from these books -- of course featuring his compelling and classic Victorian morality tale, A Christmas Carol.

The most important volume from our collections exhibited is an 1863 edition of Great Expectations printed by Goetzel in Mobile in 1863. This confederate imprint, though rebound at some point long ago in a library binding is an important piece of Alabama history. Please stop by and see this unique convergence of Victorian London, Confederate-era Mobile, and Depression-era Tuscaloosa. This exhibit was developed largely by Amy Allen, SLIS graduate assistant, working with Jessica Lacher-Feldman.