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U.Va.
Library Receives Rare Vanity Fair Prints Of Victorian Personalities March 20, 2002-- A retired University of Virginia literature scholar has donated to the U.Va. Library nearly 900 rare caricatures of important figures from Victorian and Edwardian England. The prints were given by professor emeritus Cecil Lang, a leading 19th century literature expert, to the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library, and originally appeared in the legendary British "smart set" magazine, Vanity Fair. The urbane and trend-setting London weekly captured the interest and imagination of subscribers from 1868 to 1914 with its political, economic and society news, enhanced by chromolithographic caricatures of eminent personalities of the times. One of the most successful of the vast numbers of periodicals in 19th century England, Vanity Fair has been likened to a combination of today’s Harper’s Bazaar, Town and Country and The New Yorker. "While the prints are quite amusing and entertaining in themselves, more importantly they are a valuable collection and important resource with obvious research potential in Victorian and Edwardian literature and history, fine arts and the history of printing," said Kathryn N. Morgan, associate director of the Special Collections Library. University Librarian Karin Wittenborg added: "The Vanity Fair prints are a significant addition to our rare materials on Victorian literature and history. Mr. Lang is renowned as a scholar of that period and it is a particular honor to receive this gift from him." Lang, a U.Va. professor of English from 1967 to 1991 who lives in Charlottesville, collected the prints as a reference resource of notable Victorians while he was editing the letters of the British writer Matthew Arnold. Each Vanity Fair issue featured a cartoon, or caricature, depicting a prominent person of lasting -- or fleeting -- fame during the golden age of the British Empire. Vanity Fair’s founding editor, Thomas Gibson Bowles, referred to the illustrations as "the unheroic representation of heroes." More than 2,000 of these caricatures appeared of subjects that included artists, athletes, royalty, statesmen, scientists, authors, actors, soldiers and scholars. Among Lang’s set, for example, are drawings of Winston Churchill, Robert Browning, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Charles Darwin, Rudyard Kipling and Queen Victoria. Produced by an international group of talented artists, the illustrations are the chief legacy of the magazine and now form a unique and valuable pictorial record of the period. Among the artists who contributed illustrations were Sir Max Beerbohm, Sir Leslie Ward (who signed his work "Spy"), the Italian Carlo Pellegrini (known as "Ape"), the French artist James Jacques Tissot and the American Thomas Nast. The prints are now available in the Special Collections Library and are cataloged in VIRGO, the Library’s online catalog at www.lib.virginia.edu. The Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library houses the University’s many outstanding collections of rare books and manuscripts. The primary focus of these collections is American history and literature, in particular, the Tracy W. McGregor Library of American History and the Clifton Waller Barrett Library of American Literature. Among the treasures to be found in Special Collections are Thomas Jefferson’s papers and his architectural drawings of the University of Virginia; the Paul Mellon Collection of Americana; and the largest single collection of William Faulkner editions, manuscripts and personal papers. To learn more about the resources found in Special Collections, visit the Web site www.lib.virginia.edu/speccol or call (434) 924-3025. Contact: Melissa Cox Norris, (434) 924-4254 |
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