First edition of The Anatomy of Melancholy!

We are very happy to announce a wonderful gift received in December of 2024: a first edition of Robert Burton’s The Anatomy of Melancholy, 1621.

How did we get so lucky? In 2017, Warren Zanes visited Colorado College to promote his book on Tom Petty. CC prof Steve Hayward had a great conversation with him on Critical Karaoke, and they stayed in touch. In 2024, the year of his Bruce Springsteen book, Zanes came back to CC to teach a class in music journalism. Soon after that, he inherited a copy of the very rare and valuable 1621 Anatomy of Melancholy, and reached out to Steve, a former bookdealer, for advice. Steve in turn talked to Special Collections, and we (well, I, Jessy Randall) introduced Zanes to bookdealer Glenn Horowitz (my former employer) for an appraisal. Happily for CC, Zanes decided to donate the book to us!

What is The Anatomy of Melancholy, and why is it important? In a 2001 article in The Guardian, Nicholas Lezard describes it as “the book to end all books … a 17th-century compendium of human thought that is funnier than it sounds.” Author Robert Burton (“Democritus Junior” on the title page) was a scholar and librarian at Oxford University. According to Lezard, his goal with the book was no less than “to explain and account for all human emotion and thought.” It grew to 500,000 words by its sixth and final edition.

This particular copy, before it came to the Zanes family, was the property of Amos Copleston, born in 1638 in Cornwall, England. He wrote an ownership inscription, “Amos Coplestone his book 1690,” and then wrote it again twice more, “Amos Coplestone his book,” for a total of three times, twice at the front and once at the back. The Zanes family left no ownership marks. We have now placed a small Colorado College bookplate on the front pastedown.

CC prof Jared Richman has already come by the library to admire the new acquisition. He plans to bring his Book History & Materiality students to Special Collections for a closer look. And that’s what it’s all about at CC, staving off melancholy by teaching and learning and reading and writing and thinking.

Diary of an overland journey

A page from the Phipps materials

Assistant Curator Amy Brooks writes:

Some days, in the job I have had the good fortune to hold for 21 years, I get to do something quite special. Today, I got to catalog an amazing travel diary, that of Emma Phipps, a young woman who made the arduous journey from Massachusetts to Colorado Springs in 1880. In the 26-page handwritten diary, and in letters home to her sister Ella and to their mother, she vividly and eloquently – sometimes disparagingly, but always with a sense of wonder – describes the raw and rugged terrain: ferocious wind and ubiquitous dust, the dearth of rain, towering silver mountains and crackling-brown prairies and plains, cacti and flora, wild rivers they forded; the cows and horses and burros and prairie dogs. She paints a picture of burgeoning towns peopled with railroad men, cattle ranchers, cowboys, and miners; also sometimes, wealthy, elegantly attired beneficiaries of the then-booming mining and railroad industries. She writes of places now well-known: Denver, Manitou Springs, Canon City, Pueblo, Ute Pass; the San Juans and Pikes Peak. Hers is a firsthand account of the rough-and-tumble early days of the Old West. (No mention of the land’s original and rightful inhabitants, a story embedded in the gaps of this one.)

The author, with her brother Martin, came West seeking the promise of health benefits for his unnamed illness. Emma alludes to her brother’s ill-health and his desire to “camp out” and find refuge in Nature. One can only speculate about what ailed Martin (two letters written by him are in this archive), but it would be wonderful to have a CC student or any researcher illuminate the gaps in this post-Civil War tale.

On days like this, voices reach me from the past and say, “We were here.” It reminds me of our transient stay on this planet, and the importance of respecting it and living our best lives on it. Also, of the importance of writing down our stories, preferably on paper, dated and signed.

The Emma Phipps archive is cataloged here.

Bartholin’s observations on the unicorn

In August of 2024, just in time to share the book with Carol Neel’s First Year Foundations class “The Animal-Human Boundary” (also known informally, by us at least, as “beasts and monsters”), Special Collections purchased a 1678 book on unicorns:

Bartholin, Thomas (1616-1680). De Unicornu Observationes Novae. Amsterdam: H. Wetstenius, 1678.

This is the first illustrated edition (a version without pictures was published in 1645), so even if, like most people in 1678 (and today), you don’t read Latin, you can still enjoy this book. We thank the seller, Paul M. Dowling of Liber Antiqus, for providing these images.

The Edward Worth Library in Dublin, Ireland, provides a useful overview of unicorn theory here, and Google Books has digitized versions both the 1645 and 1678 editions.

Dorothy Mierow sketchbook

Dorothy Mierow (1920-2000) was the daughter of CC president Charles Mierow. She served as Curator of the CC Museum from 1956 to 1962, and then was part of the first Peace Corps group to travel to Nepal. She is the author of several books, including Thirty Years in PokharaThis Beautiful Nepal, and Himalayan Birds and Flowers. We have a collection of her papers, Ms 383.

Just look at these pages from her 1973 sketchbook. Just look at them!

CC students rallying for peace in 1962

by Clare Trissel Davis, Colorado College Project Archivist

As Archivist for the three-year grant-funded History of CC Project, I have had the opportunity to unearth important protest stories from our institutional memory. The Office of the Dean of Faculty records that I’ve acquired from the basement of Armstrong include information about a student group called Commitment, assembled on campus in the early 60s, that opposed nuclear armament. Pictured below are students from Commitment attending a peace rally in Washington D.C. on February 16, 1962.

Commitment (student group), 1962-1963, Office of the Dean of Faculty records, RG-001. Colorado College Records.

In its statement of purpose, Commitment claimed that “as young people living under the threat of nuclear war, we are deeply concerned for the survival of civilization. We are not protesting our armed forces, but we seriously question the moral and practical value of nuclear arms as a means of deterring war and securing peace. We are campaigning for Life, not only for ourselves, but for all Beings which possess this gift.” The group sought to challenge the Springs community to accept responsibility for “supporting alternatives to the arms race” and hosted three follow-up meetings to the College’s 1962 Symposium: “War or Peace in the Sixties: The Issue of Survival in the Nuclear Age” including a talk by Dr. Glenn Snyder on “Deterrence and Defense in Nato Strategy.”

Both Dean Lloyd E. Worner and President Louis T. Benezet supported the group. Benezet acknowledged that some of the 15 “idealistic” students on campus were the brightest and most talented in the student body. Though the group was heckled and challenged by other students on campus, the administration defended the legitimacy of their perspective.

to “THE” or not to “THE”

As College Archivist, I frequently get questions about whether or not there should be a “The” in front of “Colorado College.” I think the answer is no.

Colorado College is and was Colorado College, without a “The.” We began as Colorado College (no “The”) in 1874. College mailings from that period do not use “The.” The earliest college seal, used on the cover of the 1905 CC course catalog, has no “The.”

From the 1960s through about 2010, CC sometimes used a “The” in front of its name, but not consistently. In the CC course catalog, we find “The” in 1963-1964, but not before, and it’s in 2010-2011, but not after. Even within a particular catalog, use of “The” is not consistent. Many CC catalogs for this period have “Colorado College” on the cover and “The Colorado College” on the title page, and text throughout any particular catalog will sometimes have “The” and sometimes not.

From 1989-1998, CC’s official logo included the “The.” Before that, CC didn’t have an official logo; after that, our logos have no “The.”

For more information, see Colorado College Information File “Colorado College – Emblem, Seal, Motto, Insignia, Logo, Graphic Images, Mascot, Yells, Cheers, Chants, Colors, Letterhead, Stationery, Signage, Swag” in Special Collections. (As you can tell, you’ll find a lot of other fun stuff in that file, too.)

LGBT History ?

Special Collections recently purchased a “Colorado Homesteaders” photograph album containing this intriguing image dated 1924.

The photo is labeled “practiseing” (practicing) and shows two women kissing.

We don’t know their names or anything about them. We don’t know who labeled the photo. We have so many questions. This is what it is to study LGBTQ+ / gay / lesbian / queer history / herstory / theirstory / ourstory.

The album is not yet cataloged, but researchers are welcome to view it in Special Collections — just ask for the “Colorado Homesteaders” album.

Chinese students at CC

Guest post by Hongli Zeng, CC class of 2024.

Today, with approximately 20 students per class, Chinese students make up the largest international student community at Colorado College. Their story dates back to as early as the late 1910s.

In the summer of 2022, CC History Major Hongli Zeng conducted primary-source research with the abundant archives provided by the Special Collection. By looking at documents ranging from the Colorado College Yearbook (Pikes Peak Nugget), the college newspaper (The Tiger, now named The Catalyst), Registrar records, local gazetteers, and personal memoirs, the research attempts to reconstruct details of the lived experience of this special community on campus a hundred years ago.

A total of ten students were enrolled at Colorado College in the academic year 1923-1924, making the “largest Oriental Club the city ever had”.

The Colorado College Tiger, Tuesday, October 2, 1923.

Recipients of the Boxer Indemnity Scholarship facilitated by both the American and Chinese governments, those students were welcomed by both the college and community in Colorado Springs with hospitality and curiosity. Chinese students were often invited to give speeches addressing the cultural mutual understanding of both countries. Occasional events such as “The Celebration of the founding of the Chinese Republic” and the Exhibition of Ancient Chinese Arts were also held on campus, attracting attentions from the President and students.

Some, however, also experienced unpleasant encounters of orientalism and racism, only a few decades after the enactment of the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882 and the atrocity of Denver’s Anti-Chinese Riots in 1880. A centerpiece of this episode that highlighted tensions of Chinese students’ identity as racial minority on campus was probably the “poem debate” between an American student and their two Chinese classmates. With a “provocative” poem posted on The Tiger in March 1924 calling the Chinese “Chinee” and expressing despise for Chinese cultures, two Chinese students majoring in English literature and Arts respectively soon replied with poems that demonstrated not only their cultural pride but also extraordinary literary cultivation as non-native speakers.

The Colorado College Tiger, Tuesday, March 25, 1924.
The Colorado College Tiger, Friday, March 28, 1924.

This dramatic anecdote was only tip of the iceberg of a more comprehensive image of the lived experience of the very first group of Chinese students in the history of CC. Their foreign-study journey started at Colorado College, but didn’t end here. Pursuing graduate degrees at the most prestigious institutions on the east coast including Harvard and Columbia University, many of them became well accomplished in their respective fields in later lives. That American student who wrote a rather childish poem probably didn’t expect replies from two Chinese peers who would later stand on the list of the most influential Chinese literates and intellectuals of the 20th century, one who single-handedly translated the complete works of Shakespeare into Chinese and another remembered today for his unbounded patriotism and leftist romanticism in both poem and politics.

A more detailed research paper on this subject is now available in Special Collection for public view (in Colorado College Information Files, Students – Chinese). If you are interested in discussing this topic further with the researcher, feel free to reach out to h_zeng@coloradocollege.edu.