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Books + Manuscripts

A childhood gift inspires a lifelong passion for India and map-collecting

December 5, 2022 - Aaron T. Pratt

Early map of India

Charting a Path

Sixty maps and other prints of South Asia and the surrounding region have recently arrived at the Ransom Center at The University of Texas at Austin in honor of former professor Susan G. Hadden. Generously donated by her husband, James Hadden, Jr., the newly acquired Susan G. Hadden Collection of Early Maps of India contains maps dating from 1540 to around 1880, and together they track developments in cartography and the rise of European trade, colonization, and ultimately empire in the region.

The Hadden collection’s earliest map is a two-page woodcut that was printed as part of Sebastian Münster’s Geographia (Basel, 1540), a Latin version of Ptolemy’s widely printed and adapted Geography. It is the first printed map dedicated to illustrating the Asian continent as a whole. In it, only four cities within India have been identified, all on the western coast, all sites of early Portuguese settlement and/or trade.

One of the most significant maps in the collection was first published only 30 years later: a copy of Abraham Ortelius’s map of Southeast Asia from a later sixteenth- or early seventeenth-century edition of his Theatrum orbis terrarum, the book famously recognized as the first modern atlas. Printed from an engraved copperplate, Ortelius’s map stands in contrast to Münster’s, naming dozens of ports along the full coast of the Indian peninsula along with numerous cities in the interior.

Early map of India
Abraham Ortelius, Indiae Orientalis insularumque adiacientium typus [map], in Theatrum orbis terrarum (Antwerp: s.n., between 1578 and 1603). Susan G. Hadden Collection of Early Maps of India, Harry Ransom Center.
As the maps advance from the seventeenth century through the eighteenth and into the nineteenth, they show further European encroachment and then colonial rule at the hands of the British East India Company and, ultimately, the British government itself. One map from 1851, for instance, uses hand-coloring to highlight the division of “British India” into the three Presidencies of Bengal, Madras, and Bombay and differentiates between towns that were home to military and civilian stations. It also includes the path of a proposed rail system, one with routes that differ from the ones ultimately built.

The maps’ collector, Susan G. Hadden (1945–1995), was born in Austin, Texas. Not long after her birth, her family moved across the country when her father, Nathan Ginsburg, took a faculty position in physics at Syracuse University. Once grown, Hadden obtained degrees from Radcliffe College and the University of Chicago, ending up back in Austin as a professor in the LBJ School of Public Affairs and the Center of Asian Studies at The University of Texas. She worked at the university from 1979 until her death.

Mermaids on a map
Details of sea creatures and mermaids from Abraham Ortelius, Indiae Orientalis insularumque adiacientium typus [map], in Theatrum orbis terrarum (Antwerp: s.n., between 1578 and 1603). Susan G. Hadden Collection of Early Maps of India, Harry Ransom Center.
The M.A. and Ph.D. in political science that she earned at the University of Chicago brought her to a fruitful career working in public policy on a wide range of issues. During the late 1980s and early 1990s, she became a recognized expert in telecommunications, serving as an adviser to former Vice President Al Gore on public access to the internet. She never forgot, though, the passion that had been sparked when she received a gift from India while in grade school. At Radcliffe, she studied Sanskrit with Harvard University professor Daniel H. H. Ingalls, and she published research on pollution control in India well after pivoting to policy.

When Hadden was approaching the end of her time as a doctoral student, her parents took an extended vacation in Europe. While traveling, they purchased maps to give their daughter as a present when she finished her degree. Hadden went on to build a significant map collection, using what she had amassed to decorate her home and, once in Austin, her office.

The articles, catalog clippings, purchase receipts, and correspondence with map dealers that accompany the collection show Hadden’s diligence in learning about maps—and acquiring them—from the early 1970s and into the early 1980s. A 1977 letter from a bookseller appears to indicate that Hadden at one time hoped to compile a bibliography describing every published map of India.

Typed letter with Polaroid photo
Correspondence and polaroid from Henry Taliaferro of Walter Reuben and Company to Susan G. Hadden, November 30, 1976. Susan G. Hadden Collection of Early Maps of India, Harry Ransom Center.

A letter from the previous year reveals that Hadden initially missed out on a copy of the Ortelius map mentioned above, one that had been on offer from the Austin-based bookseller Walter Reuben and Company. In a letter to Hadden, Reuben associate Henry Taliaferro writes, “We have finally located another copy of the Ortelius map of the East Indies,” offering it to her for $300. An off-center and somewhat blurry Polaroid photo of the map accompanies the letter, and two follow-up receipts—and, of course, the map itself—show that Hadden followed through with the purchase. One receipt suggests that she had been so eager to secure an Ortelius from Reuben that she put down a $100 deposit to ensure that she was offered the next one to become available.

Early map of India
India extrema XIX nova tabula [map], in Geographia, by Ptolemy and Sebastian Münster (Basel: Henricus Petrus, 1540). Susan G. Hadden Collection of Early Maps of India,
Now at the Center, the Hadden maps supplement and extend our existing Kraus Map Collection, which features European maps and globes from the late Middle Ages to the end of the seventeenth century. We are confident these additions will prove to be an asset in University of Texas classes and to researchers. Two of the Hadden maps, in fact, have already been seen by thousands of visitors to the Center: We recently exhibited the Münster map of Asia and a section of a globe by Vincenzo Coronelli in our Stories to Tell gallery as part of “Printing the World in Premodern Europe.”

Dr. Aaron T. Pratt is the Carl and Lily Pforzheimer Curator of Early Books and Manuscripts at the Ransom Center.

Image: John Rapkin, British India [map], in The Illustrated Atlas, and Modern History of the World, ed. Robert Montgomery Martin (London: John Tallis and Company, ca. 1851). Susan G. Hadden Collection of Early Maps of India, Harry Ransom Center.

Filed Under: Books + Manuscripts, Featured1

Women and the Making of Ulysses: A History in Ten Objects

July 28, 2022 - Harry Ransom Center

Exhibition gallery

by CLARE HUTTON

This article is devoted to objects that tell the story of women who supported James Joyce and the publication of his landmark novel, Ulysses (1922).  They were previously on display in our exhibit, Women and the Making of Ulysses, curated by Dr Clare Hutton, author of Serial Encounters: Ulysses and the Little Review (Oxford University Press, 2019).

[Read more…] about Women and the Making of Ulysses: A History in Ten Objects

Filed Under: Authors, Books + Manuscripts, Exhibitions + Events, Featured1, Featured3 Tagged With: birth patterns, Ezra Pound, family correspondence, finance, Harriet Weaver, James Joyce, Jane Heap, John Stanislaus Joyce, literature, Ludmila Bloch Savitsky, Margaret Anderson, Mary Jane Joyce, Nora Barnacle, Sylvia Beach, The Little Review, Ulysses, Ulysses100, war loans

Women and the Making of Joyce’s Ulysses: A History in Ten Objects #10

July 6, 2022 - Harry Ransom Center

Page proof

#10: Page 709 of the final corrected page proofs of Ulysses (1922), James Joyce Collection, Harry Ransom Center 

by CLARE HUTTON

This is the tenth article in a series devoted to objects that tell the story of women who supported author James Joyce and the publication of his landmark novel, Ulysses (1922). Learn more in the exhibition, Women and the Making of Joyce’s Ulysses, curated by Dr. Clare Hutton and on view through July 17, 2022. Subscribe to eNews to receive all the articles in this series.

Joyce was still adding to the text of the final eighteenth chapter of Ulysses less than two weeks before the first edition was published on 2 February 1922. This single page of proof reveals much about the complications of the process. Working in two colors of ink – red and black – Joyce has gone through the text at least twice in order to correct typographical errors, and insert new additions to the text. Notable errors that he catches include “as tone” corrected to “a stone” and “thatand” corrected to “that and”.

[Read more…] about Women and the Making of Joyce’s Ulysses: A History in Ten Objects #10

Filed Under: Authors, Books + Manuscripts, Exhibitions + Events, Featured1 Tagged With: James Joyce, literature, Ulysses, Ulysses Ten Objects, Ulysses100

ABOUT CLARE HUTTON

Dr. Clare Hutton is Reader in English and Digital Humanities at Loughborough University, and the curator of Women and the Making of Joyce’s Ulysses, a centenary Ulysses exhibition at the Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin. Her monograph, Serial Encounters: Ulysses and The Little Review (OUP, 2019) has just been reissued in paperback. Her other research includes editing The Irish Book in English, 1891-2000 (OUP, 2011), and many essays on Yeats, Joyce, and the "Irish Literary Revival."

Women and the Making of Joyce’s Ulysses: A History in Ten Objects #9

June 29, 2022 - Harry Ransom Center

Typescript

#9: A single page from Helen Joyce’s “Portrait of the Artist by his Daughter-in-law,” begun in 1955. James Joyce Collection, Harry Ransom Center, 7.3

by CLARE HUTTON

This is the ninth article in a series devoted to objects that tell the story of women who supported author James Joyce and the publication of his landmark novel, Ulysses (1922). Learn more in the exhibition, Women and the Making of Joyce’s Ulysses, curated by Dr. Clare Hutton and on view through July 17, 2022. Subscribe to eNews to receive all the articles in this series.

In chapter 9 of Ulysses when Haines asks Buck Mulligan whether Stephen Dedalus has written anything “for your movement,” Mulligan responds with derision, saying that Dedalus is “going to write something in ten years.” Writing is something that can always be put off, and writers who commit to writing regularly and for publication are the exception not the rule. Writing is difficult, after all. Difficult, but necessary:  particularly if you want certain things to be remembered.

[Read more…] about Women and the Making of Joyce’s Ulysses: A History in Ten Objects #9

Filed Under: Authors, Books + Manuscripts, Exhibitions + Events, Featured1 Tagged With: Helen Joyce, literature, Ulysses, Ulysses Ten Objects, Ulysses100

ABOUT CLARE HUTTON

Dr. Clare Hutton is Reader in English and Digital Humanities at Loughborough University, and the curator of Women and the Making of Joyce’s Ulysses, a centenary Ulysses exhibition at the Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin. Her monograph, Serial Encounters: Ulysses and The Little Review (OUP, 2019) has just been reissued in paperback. Her other research includes editing The Irish Book in English, 1891-2000 (OUP, 2011), and many essays on Yeats, Joyce, and the "Irish Literary Revival."

Women and the Making of Joyce’s Ulysses: A History in Ten Objects #8

June 22, 2022 - Harry Ransom Center

Court house

Detroit Publishing Company, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division

#8: Jefferson Market Court House, New York, Ca. 1905

by CLARE HUTTON

This is the eighth article in a series devoted to objects that tell the story of women who supported author James Joyce and the publication of his landmark novel, Ulysses (1922). Learn more in the exhibition, Women and the Making of Joyce’s Ulysses, curated by Dr. Clare Hutton and on view through July 17, 2022. Subscribe to eNews to receive all the articles in this series.

What was it like to be put on trial for the “crime” of publishing an instalment of Ulysses serially in The Little Review? It is difficult to get a detailed sense of this as a lived experience, or to know how to express that experience in visual terms. No transcript was made of the trial proceedings, and there was no written decision handed down. But this photograph of the Jefferson Market Police Court in New York’s Greenwich Village communicates something of the world in which Anderson and Heap found themselves moving when the case came to trial before three magistrates at the Court of Special Sessions in February 1921.

[Read more…] about Women and the Making of Joyce’s Ulysses: A History in Ten Objects #8

Filed Under: Authors, Books + Manuscripts, Exhibitions + Events, Featured1 Tagged With: Jane Heap, literature, Margaret Anderson, The Little Review, Ulysses, Ulysses Ten Objects, Ulysses100

ABOUT CLARE HUTTON

Dr. Clare Hutton is Reader in English and Digital Humanities at Loughborough University, and the curator of Women and the Making of Joyce’s Ulysses, a centenary Ulysses exhibition at the Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin. Her monograph, Serial Encounters: Ulysses and The Little Review (OUP, 2019) has just been reissued in paperback. Her other research includes editing The Irish Book in English, 1891-2000 (OUP, 2011), and many essays on Yeats, Joyce, and the "Irish Literary Revival."

Women and the Making of Joyce’s Ulysses: A History in Ten Objects #7

June 3, 2022 - Harry Ransom Center

Letter

#7: Letter from James Joyce to Ludmila Bloch Savitsky, June 20, 1921

by CLARE HUTTON

This is the seventh article in a series devoted to objects that tell the story of women who supported author James Joyce and the publication of his landmark novel, Ulysses (1922). Learn more in the exhibition, Women and the Making of Joyce’s Ulysses, curated by Dr. Clare Hutton and on view through July 17, 2022. Subscribe to eNews to receive all the articles in this series.

This is an unpublished letter in French from Joyce to Ludmila Bloch Savitsky (1881–1957) who did much to introduce Joyce to French literary circles by authoring the first French translation of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (Dedalus: Portrait de l’artiste jeune par lui-même (Paris: La Sirène, 1924). Savitsky was an accomplished writer, critic, and translator who could work confidently between English, French, German, and Russian.

[Read more…] about Women and the Making of Joyce’s Ulysses: A History in Ten Objects #7

Filed Under: Authors, Books + Manuscripts, Exhibitions + Events, Featured1 Tagged With: literature, Ludmila Bloch Savitsky, Ulysses, Ulysses Ten Objects, Ulysses100

ABOUT CLARE HUTTON

Dr. Clare Hutton is Reader in English and Digital Humanities at Loughborough University, and the curator of Women and the Making of Joyce’s Ulysses, a centenary Ulysses exhibition at the Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin. Her monograph, Serial Encounters: Ulysses and The Little Review (OUP, 2019) has just been reissued in paperback. Her other research includes editing The Irish Book in English, 1891-2000 (OUP, 2011), and many essays on Yeats, Joyce, and the "Irish Literary Revival."

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