The title of this book: From the Land of the Snow-Pearls: Tales from Puget Sound is so enchanting who could resist further exploration. The book is a collection of short stories that reflect the natural beauty of the area and a statement from the frontispiece of the book says it best:
Puget Sound lies in its emerald setting like a great blue sapphire, which at sunset, draws to its breast all the marvelous and splendid coloring of the fire-opal. Around it, shining through their rose-colored mists like pearls upon the soft blue or green of the sky, are linked the great snow-mountains, so beautiful and so dear, that those who love this land with a proud and passionate love, have come to think of it, fondly and poetically, as “the land of the snow-pearls.”
The front cover of the book is decorated in gold with a beautiful four leaf clover.
The author Ella Higginson’s papers are located in the Western Washington University
Center for Pacific Northwest Studies.
A short biographical statement from the web site is as follows:
“Northwest poet and writer Ella Higginson (1861-1940) was born Ella Rhoads in Council Grove, Kansas. She moved to Oregon with her parents as an infant, spending her youth in Portland and Oregon City. She attended public school in Oregon, and also received private lessons from Oxford trained S.D. Pope, then one of the most renowned educators on the West coast. In 1885, Ella married Russell C. Higginson (1852-1909) in Portland Oregon. The couple moved to Bellingham, Washington (then the town of Sehome) in 1888, where they opened a drug store on Elk Street. It was during this period that Higginson’s writing career began to flourish, with her poetry and short stories published nationally by journals including McClures, Harper’s Monthly, and Colliers. Her best known work, a poem entitled “Four Leaf Clover,” was first published by West Shore Magazine in 1890. Higginson’s novels and collections of short stories include Mariella-Of-Out-West, Alaska the Great Country, The Flower that Grew in the Sand, From the Land of Snow Pearls, and The Forest Orchid and Other Stories. In June 1931, she was made poet laureate of Washington State.”
It’s 1914. Twenty-five-year-old Frances Marion left her second husband in order to go to Los Angeles, where she is determined to live independently and to make a career of being an artist. However, “flickers” –silent moving pictures- are the new enthralling medium of art. Frances finds her true calling: writing stories for this new medium. Frances also makes the acquaintance of America’s Sweetheart, Mary Pickford, and they hit it off instantly. Their success is astronomical, but it comes at a price. They both struggle with their personal lives and the desire to share it with someone.
Look for this book in the Popular Reading Collection!
Are you following the Archives & Special Collections on social media yet? If not, you should be! We created Twitter and Instagram accounts last fall where we post information about interesting items from our collections, historic photographs, and reminders about upcoming events. We also have an active Tumblr account that is run by our A&SC Peer Research Specialist (student Julia Masur ’19) and has been in existence for several years. It has been really fun to interact with current students and alumni on our social media accounts, and we’ve even gotten responses from several Puget Sound alums who are now archivists themselves!
In addition to interacting with the Puget Sound community, we are enjoying following other archival repositories on social media. It is interesting to see other archivists post about how they are using archival materials in the classroom, the events they are organizing, and the types of collections that they are responsible for. Social media is a great way to connect with people on campus and beyond and we look forward to sharing more pieces from our collections with you!
The Archives & Special Collections is open Mondays through Thursdays from 10:00 AM to 3:00 PM or by appointment.
By Laura Edgar, Assistant Archivist
After having killed off the popular detective Sherlock Holmes and effectively ending the series, The Hound of the Baskervilles marks Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s return to the Holmes storyline. The story follows the characteristic Sherlock Holmes crime pattern, introducing several mysterious characters and seemingly ambiguous clues that Holmes, using his powers of observation and deduction, unravels to come to a dramatic conclusion.
Baskervilles is arguably Doyle’s most literary work. It is also one of the most well-known Sherlock Holmes mysteries, undoubtedly due to its many iterations on radio, television, and movies. One needs to think only of the Scooby Doo cartoons to see the influence of the Sherlock Holmes method of deductive reasoning based on a series of clues and the use of a monster to scare away those “pesky kids” who would try to solve the mystery!
Laura has it all: a successful career; a long marriage to a rich husband; and a twenty-three year-old son, named Daniel who is kind, handsome, and talented. Daniel then meets Cherry. Cherry is a young, beautiful girl, but she wants the golden life Laura has lived. A tragedy strikes, a decision is made and a lie is told—a lie that can change their lives forever. The Girlfriend is a psychological thriller about sabotage, retaliation, jealousy, and fear.
Check it out in the Popular Reading Collection!
(Pictures rom Left, top, bottom) 1.) Eunice Williams at Pacific Beach, 1951. 2.) Women’s field hockey, 1948. Williams is on the far right. 3.) Eunice Williams ’51 and friends, 1949. Williams is second from the right.
One of the most important ways that the Archives & Special Collections collects new materials is through donations from students and alumni. Eunice Williams Goldsmith ’51 is an excellent example of this; she donated a significant collection of photographs in 2008 (available on A Sound Past, our digital image repository) that give us a better idea of what her college experience was like.
Williams was an exchange student from Cornwall, England, who came to what was then the College of Puget Sound in the fall of 1947. She graduated in August 1951, with a Bachelor’s of Science in home economics. During her time here, she was very active in campus life, especially athletics. She was a member of Alpha Beta Upsilon, a local sorority that became Delta Delta Delta in 1952, and competed for the Betas (as they were known) in intramural badminton and skiing. In addition, she was involved in the Women’s Athletics Association as a member of the field hockey team. She played left wing and served as both the team manager and team captain during her time at CPS.
On top of being so involved on campus, Williams had some interesting experiences with politics during her time here. In 1948, she and three other students participated in a discussion on whether a two-party system could endure in the United States. The discussion was broadcasted on the radio station KBTI, and covered in The Trail. She was also one of 22 international students to meet Governor Arthur B. Langlie and Secretary of State Earl Coe in Olympia in 1949.
We’re thankful for students and alumni like Eunice Williams who have chosen to donate documentation of their student days to us here at the A&SC. If you have anything that you think could help us document the student experience, please contact us and let us know!
The Archives & Special Collections is open on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays from 10:00 a.m.-3:00 p.m. or by appointment.
By Julia Masur
For centuries people and organizations have tried to ban books and other materials ranging from the Bible to Harry Potter. Every September librarians put up displays for Banned Books Week in order to celebrate freedom of speech and our freedom to read. But, censorship is not one size fits all, nor is it always noticeable. Even though I work in a library I never thought I would encounter and have to fight against censorship.
I work with the journals at Collins Memorial Library. All of the issues of the Wall Street Journal, Beijing Review, and Public Policy and Aging Report come across my desk. I am used to contacting publishers about missing issues, but over the past year I dealt with something I never had to deal with before.
In May 2017, instead of the new issue of Der Stern, a German news magazine, we received a yellow postcard from the publisher. It said that the issue “was not made available for export to the USA.” I thought that was unusual, but set the postcard aside and went about my work.
In August, we received another yellow postcard instead of the new issue of Der Stern. This time the yellow postcard really got my attention. I had been reading and hearing about the cover of the missing issue for the past week. In news outlets across the United States people were talking about the controversial cover. An image of the cover was available, but the magazine would not be available for export to the United States. I still was not sure how to handle the situation so I once again set the postcard aside and went back to work.
In late November, a discussion of the missing issues of Der Stern began on a librarian listserv. Another library had received a third yellow postcard. Librarians at various institutions reached out to distributors and to the publisher. While waiting for the responses I received an email from the company who handles our subscription. They were able to arrange for us to receive the missing November issue, number 47, but were unable to get copies of the other two issues. I heard back from other librarians who had heard that one of the distributors was not sending the issues because they feared they would be sued. Apparently, the issues were being censored by the distributor.
This is the cover of issue number 47. It is unclear who the distributor thought would sue them, but President Trump is on the cover of two of the censored issues. The cover story of issue 47 is titled “Trump’s Russian Secret.” The controversial August cover was a picture of Trump draped in the American flag, arm raised in the Nazi salute. The cover was in response to President Trump’s response to the violent actions in Charlottesville, VA.
In my opinion, having issue 47 in our library is a symbol of the freedom of speech this country was founded on. Part of a librarian’s job is to fight against censorship, in whatever form it takes.
– By Dusty Gorman, Electronic Resources Librarian
L. Frank Baum set out to write a fairy tale for children that was specifically American, not European. His work became popular immediately and the characters, tropes and phrases that he created remain recognizable to most Americans today, even if they have not read the book. Munchkins, the Tin Man, Scarecrow, and the Yellow Brick Road continue to form part of our common cultural vocabulary.
To learn more about this great book and author, visit the Library of Congress exhibit on Oz.
