Gandhi, Shakespeare artifacts on display at UTC

A 1931 letter from Mahatma Gandhi, a 1632 print of William Shakespeare's play "The Twelfth Night" and a Nazi Germany newspaper are among the items to be viewed in a exhibit at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.

"Our Cabinets of Antiquarian Curiosities" will be on display at the new Lupton Library Special Collections through June 1.

"It's a number of eclectic items," said Steven Cox, Special Collections librarian and university archivist. "It doesn't focus on one theme or collection."

UTC's Special Collections includes, among other things, 110 manuscript collections, close to 7,000 rare books and 600 linear feet of university archive materials, he said.

The university received the Gandhi letter, according to Mr. Cox, after then-university President Alexander Guerry wrote to celebrities and other noted individuals for advice to incoming freshmen.

The brief note from the spiritual and political leader of India is only two sentences long.

"Dear Friend, I thank you for your letter of 10th Nov. last. The only thing I can think of saying to the fresh entrants is that they should put character before literary knowledge. Yours sincerely, M.K. Gandhi," the note states.

The letter is the most prominent of those received, archives specialist Chapel Cowden said.

The copy of Shakespeare's play is one of the oldest items in the Special Collections, library officials said.

Donated by a 1905 alumnus in the 1940s, it originally was part of a larger publication, "The Second Folio edition of Shakespeare's Works," Mr. Cox said. It is not uncommon for such editions to be split up, he said.

The folio is "fairly rare," Ms. Cowden said, but she did not know the value. A complete "Second Folio" was expected to bring $200,000 to $300,000 in a San Francisco auction last month, according to www.liveauctioneers.com.

Mr. Cox said the Nazi newspaper, Das Reich, was sent by a former University of Chattanooga student to a professor who taught him political science at the school during World War II. It is one of several Nazi-related items in the exhibit.

Among other items in the display are several pieces of art by former UC student Barry Moser, now a Massachusetts resident and well-known artist and illustrator, according to Ms. Cowden. The items include a woodblock carving of author Edgar Allen Poe, a print made from the carving, a metal

etching titled "The Death of Narcissus" and a print made from it.

There also are Civil War-era uniform artifacts, letters and photos.

"It's a nice selection," Ms. Cowden said. "It's gotten a significant amount of interest from the student population. Sometimes, it's a challenge to get (them) in the doors."

One of the newest items in the Special Collections, though not on display, is the set of notes that Alabama historian Robert Scott Davis made on Joseph Ritchey, a Hamilton County native and post-Civil War outlaw, Mr. Cox said. The notes, he said, were made for an article Mr. Scott wrote in a recent Tennessee historical journal.