The late Charles Mann was the first holder of the Dorothy Foehr Huck Chair for Special Collections and the chief of Rare Books and Special Collections in the Pennsylvania State University Libraries for over four decades until his unexpected death in July of 1998. In the months just before he died, Charley (as he was known to all) mounted a small exhibit on Myles Birket Foster—something that he had intended to do for many years. This digital exhibit recreates, in a slightly different order, the exhibition that appeared in the Rare Books reading room in the summer of 1998. The illustrations that we have scanned are the same images that Charley chose to display, and the text for the labels is Charley's own.

Charley was Penn State's resident antiquarian, and his extraordinary range of knowledge made him an expert on a vast array of topics. But one of his particular passions was Victorian England. As an addict of Victoriana, Charley was an especially keen collector of the Crystal Palace, the astounding glass building that housed London's Great Exhibition of 1851, the first world's fair. The legacy of the palace is immense; it virtually created the idea of an encyclopedic museum. The contents were a glorious hodgepodge, determinedly all-inclusive, ornate, gaudy, and in the end, slightly dotty. (Charley loved to tell visitors that for many years the worst thing you could say about something was that it might have won a medal at the Crystal Palace.)

But Charley reminded us (in an interview with writer Pamela West in Research/Penn State in September 1986) that in recent years the pendulum of taste has been swinging rather wickedly, perhaps back to a renewed appreciation of once-spurned Victorian objects. He saw in those objects a generous use of materials, a vivid sense of color, and an unashamed and inventive will to borrow designs from whatever sources were available. For Charley, Victorian design exerted a massive and personal force—beyond taste and criticism. The Victoriana that he gathered for Penn State's Rare Books collections, including Dickinson's Comprehensive Pictures of the Great Exhibition: From Originals Painted for his Royal Highness Prince Albert, are the legacy of Charley's interest and his belief that the turns of taste are fun to contemplate. Who knows what critics will think of the contents of the Crystal Palace, he would ask, in another century?

Perhaps as a rebuke to critics of the excesses of Victorian taste, Charley also built another collection ("in response to no great demand," he often chuckled) of the works of the Victorian illustrator Myles Birket Foster (1825–1899). As an antidote to the vivid and wacky contents of the Crystal Palace, the works of Birket Foster are by contrast tasteful and sweetly elegant, most often bound in wonderfully decorated bindings that signify their being produced for the gift trade. One of the books in our exhibit, Christmas With the Poets (London, 1850), is said to have been displayed in the Crystal Palace. It is truly a gift book, a "token of the season," produced for sale during the Christmas month.

Birket Foster was part of one of the great periods of book illustration in England. A former apprentice of Thomas Bewick, he worked for the London News early in his career, and soon thereafter he began to make drawings for the illustrated books of the day. He is also among the most loved of the Victorian watercolorists, and we are fortunate in this exhibition to have been able to include an original watercolor, lent to us by John Kaiser.

Charley Mann knew very well the criticism of Birket Foster's work—that it was formulaic and timid, lacking in imagination and variety, and too obviously pretty. (In his best books, such as Pictures of English Landscape, the handling is broader and looser and more admired.) But Charley loved each of the illustrations presented here, both for their "sheer pleasure to the eye," as he wrote in a caption, and for their insights into a Victorian sensibility that could produce not only overstuffed pink chairs but also delicate sketches of country life.

Acknowledgments

This is our first attempt at a "virtual" exhibit, and we owe a great debt of gratitude to staff members outside of Rare Books and Manuscripts who have put their technical and graphic skills to use in order to create this Web site. Larry Wentzel and Andy Biggans of the University Libraries' preservation department and Chris Holobar of the lending services department scanned all of the images. Their supervisors (Sue Kellerman, Judith O. Sieg Chair for Preservation, and Trish Notartomas of lending services) supported our neophyte digital endeavors by authorizing the release time for their work. Larry got us started by setting up the rough guidelines for the Web site, and Chris mounted the images on the Web and pulled everything together to give the exhibit its present shape. Jason Weigle, also of lending services, provided additional technical advice.

Sandra Stelts
Rare Books and Manuscripts
Special Collections Library
sks@psulias.psu.edu