14292: Two exciting finds for Corbett's library

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

Folks, I used to keep you posted when special items came into my library,
but I got out of the habit. However, in just the past few days two new
items have come in and I think they are quite news worthy.  As most of you
know I have been collecting English language materials on Haiti with the
intensity of a total fanatic for the past 20 years.  Two items came up in
the hands of rare book dealers, neither of which I had ever heard of in
all my hundreds of hours of searching bibliographies and libraries:

1.  Haiti Dance by Lavinia Williams Yarborough.  No date and no publisher
	listed.  50 pages.  This 8 1/2 by 11 book is on slick paper and
	just filled full-page black and white photos of famous folk
	dancers of (I guess) the 1950s.  Lots of text as well.

	Williams catalogues many different dances of Voodoo and discusses
	them and illustrates them with photos of real dancers.

	Just a wealth of information and data on Haitian dance.

2.  Memoirs of the Life and Gospel Labors of Stephen Grellet.  Edited by
	Benjamin Seebohm.  Book Association of Friends:  Philadelphia,
	1860.  394 pages.

	This is the life story of a Quaker missionary.  Only about 15
	pages are on his 1816 visit to Haiti (Hayti), but, given my
	own utter fascination with natural disasters in Haiti's history,
	I was stunned to find a long description of the September 18,
	1816 hurricane which destroyed huge portions of Port-au-Prince
	and severely damaged Leogane.

I do hope to scan his vivid description of the damage of Port-au-Prince
and add it to my "disasters" section of my web site.  For those of you who
don't know that section you may find it -- without the Grellet addition
yet -- at:

http://www.webster.edu/~corbetre/haiti/misctopic/misctopic.htm

Then scroll down to "natural disasters."

I note that I don't even have this 1816 hurricane even listed yet!!!

------------------------

New books come into my library all the time, but these were two of the
most exciting additions in all of 2002.  Now, what will 2003 bring?  I
can't wait to see!!!!

My poor mailman delivers on average about 10 books a week to my house,
almost all on Haiti, but not 100%.  I do keep him happy with a gift bottle
of Barbancourt Rum every now and again.

Bob Corbett