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Couple's book on H.G. Wells' cartoons to be celebrated May 25
Andrea
Lynn, Humanities Editor
217-333-2177; andreal@uiuc.edu
5/24/2006
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CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — The Library of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is hosting a celebration for a new book conceived and born right under its roof.
The event, a book
signing, discussion and reception, is in honor of local authors Gene
Rinkel, a librarian at Illinois, and Margaret Rinkel, a former high
school English teacher, and of their collaboration on “The Picshuas
of H.G. Wells: A Burlesque Diary,” published by the University
of Illinois Press. (“Picshua” is a cockney pronunciation
of “picture.”)
The free and public event begins at 3 p.m. Thursday (May 25) in the Rare Book & Manuscript
Library, 346 Main Library, 1408 W. Gregory Drive, Urbana.
Gene Rinkel is the curator of special collections, including the H.G.
Wells Collection, at Illinois’ Rare Book & Manuscript Library.
Since retiring from teaching, Margaret Rinkel is a frequent Rare Book
Library volunteer.
The Rinkels’ new book, which is being published this month, is
an original analysis of the collaboration of another literary couple,
the prodigious author H.G. Wells and his second wife, Amy Catherine
Robbins, later to be known as “Jane” Wells.
The Rinkel
book analyzes the heretofore-unexplored territory of hundreds of cartoons
the famous author sketched for his wife during their 30-year relationship,
which although literarily productive, was also highly unconventional
and unusually conflicted.
For their
research, the Rinkels drew primarily from Illinois’ Wells Collection,
considered to be the largest and most important Wells archive in the
world.
The U. of I. Rare Book & Manuscript Library bought the first group
of Wells materials in 1954, and having secured right of first refusal,
has added successive acquisitions through the years.
