Our Growing Collections

KENNETH A. LOHF

Alden gift. Mr. Alex E. Alden has presented the papers of Earl I.
Sponable, who served as Chief Engineer and Director of Research
for Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation and its subsidiaries
from 1926 until the 1960s. Sponable's role in research and develop¬
ment in broadcast and movie media, particularly in early sound
film, is documented in the correspondence, laboratory notebooks,
technical drawings and photographs which comprise the papers.
Much of the material donated by Mr. Alden relates to Movietone
News and to the Fox laboratories' work with color film, television
and Cinemascope. Also included are files pertaining to the Society
of Motion Picture and Tele\'ision Engineers, of which Sponable
was a member and, on several occasions, an officer. There is cor¬
respondence in the collection from Sir Edward Gordon Craig,
Lee de Forest, Samuel Lionel Rothafel and Spyros P. Skouras.

Altbach memorial gift. Members of the family and friends of the
late Lillian Altbach have donated funds for the acquisition of an
Anthony Trollope letter in Mrs. Altbach's memory. The letter,
■written on June 28, 1868, to the rising young authoress Rhoda
Broughton, praises her first novel. Not Wisely But Too Well, pub¬
lished the year previously. In the letter Trollope both encourages
and criticizes her work: "AA'ere I with you, I could point out faults
here and there against nature ... the fault lies in your exaggeration.
But I read your tale with intense interest. I wept over it . . . and
came to the conclusion that there had come up another sister
among us, of whose name we should be proud."

Anshen gift. Dr. Ruth Nanda Anshen has presented more than
five hundred letters and manuscripts for addition to the collection
of her papers which she established in the Libraries in 1977. There
are files pertaining to numerous volumes in the x'arious scries ed-