Selection of the Month
November 2009[Belle Isle]
Two Months: Being the Account of Life as a Prisoner of War by Horace Smith
Artist’s Book by Jeffrey W. Morin
Stevens Point, Wisconsin: Sailor Boy Press, 2002
Gould Library Special Collections
The images evoke wounds, scabs, pitiable scraps, and how these things become badges of honor.
-From the colophon, Jeffrey W. Morin
The text in this volume comes from the 1863 diary of Horace Smith, a Civil War soldier from Wisconsin who was held in a Confederate prison on Belle Island in Richmond, Virginia. Smith’s stark descriptions of cold, sickness, and near-constant hunger, though brief, evoke the hopelessness of life in the prison. To create this book, Morin transcribed Smith’s entries from September and October, then embellished the pages with smears and washes of color and bits of copper, bones and sandpaper.
The Selection of the Month is often chosen from the Library's Special Collections.