The
Seymour Adelman and Marjorie Dana Barlow Boxiana Collections
by Larry Saporta
No subject is, for the writer, so intensely personal as boxing. To write about boxing is to write about oneself—
however elliptically, and unintentionally. And to write about boxing is to be forced to contemplate not only boxing,
but the perimeters of civilization—what it is, or should be, to be “human.”
—Joyce Carol Oates, Foreword to On Boxing.
Those interested in the history of boxing have a superb resource in the Special Collections Department here at the College. The Seymour Adelman Boxiana Collection, the product of the Philadelphia collector's years of dedicated enthusiasm for boxing and its history, contains books, prints, and artifacts from the eighteenth century to the twentieth. Add to this the Marjorie Dana Barlow Collection, which includes books like Hieronymus Mercurialis' De Arte Gymnastica, published in Venice in 1573, as well as works from the golden age of English boxing. Between the two collections, the library's holdings on this topic are significant by any standard. The collections are currently being inventoried in preparation for an exhibition in the fall. It may seem surprising that these resources are found at a women's college, but we hope the exhibition will demonstrate how there may indeed be a connection between an institution like Bryn Mawr College and the "sweet science of bruising" (as Pierce Egan called it in his Boxiana.)
Imagine London in 1727. James Figg, the reigning boxing champion of England
defends his title against the challenger, Ned Sutton, in the first championship
title fight in history. In a talk he gave at the University of Pennsylvania
Museum in 1956, Seymour Adelman suggested how broad a range of interests might
focus on this match:
Posterity would have found that ringside crowd downright fascinating. The Prime Minister of England, Sir Robert Walpole, always aware of the responsibility of office, stood resplendent in a new peruke. Nearby was playwright Colley Cribber, and on his arm that delicious young comedienne of Drury Lane, Kitty Clive. So much for rank, fashion, and beauty. There were also present other ringsiders - the author of Gulliver's Travels, and with him, the poet of The Rape of the Lock. Jonathan Swift - Alexander Pope - William Hogarth. There, at literally the very beginning of the sport, you come upon boxing's unique appeal to authors and artists. (The Moving Pageant, 1977).
In our own century, authors as different as Norman Mailer and Joyce Carol Oates
have focussed on the boxing ring. Painters from Philadelphia's own Thomas Eakins
to Edward Hopper have found in the sport irresistible subject matter.
Boxing also provides a way to examine the social milieus in which it occurs.
The student or scholar could investigate the popularity of boxing among other
contemporary entertainments, athletic competitions, blood sports, and contests
on which people commonly bet. The sport has served as a passage to upward mobility
for the members of a series of minorities, from the eighteenth century to the
present - what can we learn about the process of integrating social groups through
the notoriety of individuals? And what about the recent popularity of boxing
as a fitness activity? Boxing, like most athletic activities, has traditionally
been a male sport and its professional competitors have been drawn from the
lower classes. What has led women and middle managers to take it up enthusiastically
in the last five years? From literary treatments and art to anthropology and
sociology, the boxing ring and the academy are not as alien to one another as
we might first be inclined to think.
Among
the collection's most interesting items are two books by Daniel Mendoza, Champion
of England from 1788 to 1795. This fighter, of Sephardic Jewish background,
vanquished taller and heavier opponents for years. He then wrote the Art of
Boxing (1789) and his Memoirs (1793), where he set out his own ideas of the
science, strategic and anatomical, of boxing. Works of art like the great English
caricaturist Cruikshank's The Boxer's Arms of 1819 lampoons fashionable London's
obsession with the sport. Supported by two corner-men, the shield of this coat
of arms is revealed on closer inspection as a boxing ring. The 1823 engraving,
A ‘Set-to’ at the Fives-Court for the benefit of ‘One of the
Fancy,’ shows the continuing popularity of the sport with the gentry. American
objects in the Adelman collection range from Thomas Worth's gruesomely comic
Slugged Out, published by Currier & Ives in 1883, to tickets for the legendary
Jim Braddock vs. Joe Louis match in 1937. There are also a substantial number
of photographs of the likes of Rocky Marciano and Georges Carpentier.
All these items are of interest to the enthusiast or historian of boxing, but
a great many hold their own on purely aesthetic grounds, like C. Metz's engraving
of Thomas Johnson & Isaac Perrins, dated 1789. Seymour Adelman also collected
a ceramic flask, small statues and medals, and a snuff box, all embellished
with pictures of boxers. We look forward to exploring the fascinating world
of boxing - and the many questions it illuminates - in the exhibition this fall.
