THE DEPARTMENT OF ARCHIVES AND SPECIAL
COLLECTIONS, J.D. WILLIAMS LIBRARY, THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSISSIPPI
Book
of Gold
Note: Click on image to enlarge
Manuscript Book. Eric A.
Dawson. "Foyer Du Soldat De Pierrefitte" Title on spine: "The
Book of Gold."
An
extraordinary autograph album and scrapbook, Eric Dawson kept "The Book of
Gold" throughout much of his adult life. A Mississippi native, Dawson
graduated from the University of Mississippi in 1908. Later he taught French at
his alma mater. During World War I, Dawson served with the American YMCA in its
"Foyers des Soldat" (Soldier's Club) program in France. Initially he
worked in Pierrefitte, a small village in the Lorraine where Dawson began his
unique book by inscribing "Foyer de Soldat de Pierrefitte" on the
title page. In 1918, he joined the United States Army as a private, later
becoming a sergeant in the Intelligence Corps. Beginning in the First World War
and continuing through the early 1940s, Dawson collected a dazzling array of
signatures, autograph sentiments, signed musical notations, autograph poems, pen
and pencil drawings, watercolor sketches, political documents, original
photographs, and war-time ephemera. The sampling of pages on display only hints
at the range, variety, and color of the album as a whole. Many important writers
(Ezra Pound, Thomas Mann, Rudyard Kipling, and William Faulkner), political and
military figures (Winston Churchill, Marshall Foch, John Pershing, Douglas
McArthur, and Woodrow Wilson with five members of the American delegation to the
Paris Peace Conference), composers (W.C. Handy, Cole Porter, Igor Stravinsky, Irving Berlin, and
Sergei Rachmaninoff), figures from the arts (Howard Chandler Christy and Henri
Matisse) and sciences (Albert Einstein), as well as from film and stage (Sarah
Bernhardt, Lillian Gish, and Tallulah Bankhead) and sport (Jack Dempsey) have
all contributed to Dawson's amazing book.
Antebellum and Civil
War Mississippi | Late 19th Century
| 20th
Century |
Literary
Mississippiana |
Introduction
An
extraordinary autograph album and scrapbook, Eric Dawson kept "The Book of
Gold" throughout much of his adult life. A Mississippi native, Dawson
graduated from the University of Mississippi in 1908. Later he taught French at
his alma mater. During World War I, Dawson served with the American YMCA in its
"Foyers des Soldat" (Soldier's Club) program in France. Initially he
worked in Pierrefitte, a small village in the Lorraine where Dawson began his
unique book by inscribing "Foyer de Soldat de Pierrefitte" on the
title page. In 1918, he joined the United States Army as a private, later
becoming a sergeant in the Intelligence Corps. Beginning in the First World War
and continuing through the early 1940s, Dawson collected a dazzling array of
signatures, autograph sentiments, signed musical notations, autograph poems, pen
and pencil drawings, watercolor sketches, political documents, original
photographs, and war-time ephemera. The sampling of pages on display only hints
at the range, variety, and color of the album as a whole. Many important writers
(Ezra Pound, Thomas Mann, Rudyard Kipling, and William Faulkner), political and
military figures (Winston Churchill, Marshall Foch, John Pershing, Douglas
McArthur, and Woodrow Wilson with five members of the American delegation to the
Paris Peace Conference), composers (W.C. Handy, Cole Porter, Igor Stravinsky, Irving Berlin, and
Sergei Rachmaninoff), figures from the arts (Howard Chandler Christy and Henri
Matisse) and sciences (Albert Einstein), as well as from film and stage (Sarah
Bernhardt, Lillian Gish, and Tallulah Bankhead) and sport (Jack Dempsey) have
all contributed to Dawson's amazing book.