New Acquisition: Soviet-Era Posters

Special Collections has received 24 Soviet era posters from a Claremont Graduate University professor, excellent examples of political imagery and message in the post WWII period in eastern Europe. We’ve digitized them, and the collection will be available in the Claremont Colleges Digital Library in the fall.


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W. D. Macray’s Life of Milton

Like many special collections, we have had a formidable backlog of uncataloged books and unprocessed collections, and we’ve made great strides over the past several years in providing access to many of these hidden collections. As we move through the backlog, we find all kinds of treasures and rarities; once in a while we find something endearing and even eccentric.
A particular example of the endearing and eccentric has been found among the rare book collection of Dr. Walter Lindley and his son Francis Haynes Lindley: W. D. Macray’s heavily annotated copy of Some Account of the Life and Writings of John Milton by H. J. Todd (London, 1826). Macray wrote his notes on little scraps of paper and pasted them into the volume; he also penciled in notes on the margins of the book, and pasted in clippings and writings inside the book covers. Here’s an example:
marginalia milton001
Call Number Hon Spcl Lindley PR 3581 T6 1826
William Dunn Macray was a British librarian, historian, and bibliographer during the 19th century. Among his contributions to scholarship are several volumes of catalogs of private and university library collections, especially at Oxford colleges, and Annals of the Bodleian Library. On the flyleaf of the Life of Milton is a note written by Macray from 1846, when he was a student attending Magdalen College.
The Francis Haynes Lindley Memorial Collection was donated to Honnold Library by Walter Lindley and F. Haynes Lindley, Jr. in memory of their father, Francis Haynes Lindley. The 3,000 volume collection was begun by Dr. Walter Lindley, physician and civic leader in early 1900s Los Angeles, who had a life-long passion for books and reading, especially Shakespeare, which he passed to his son, Francis Haynes Lindley. The Lindley Collection covers a wide range of subjects including history, literature, poetry, drama, and travel. It is particularly strong in Shakespeare, Milton, dramatists through Sheridan, Samuel Johnson, and Sir Richard Burton.