By Madeleine Klebanoff O’Brien Last summer I conducted independent research at Houghton Library through Harvard’s remote Summer Humanities and Arts Research Program undergraduate fellowship. Inspired by Houghton’s collections, I created an allegorical map of Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy. The Comedy follows Dante through Hell, Purgatory and Heaven. It is a cosmography, a “total vision” of Read More
Posted by HL Blog Staff
Baking with Emily D.
By Emily Walhout, Reference Assistant, Public Services and Christine Jacobson, Assistant Curator of Modern Books and Manuscripts Around this time of year, Team Cake’s thoughts turn toward fruitcake. Emily Dickinson’s “black cake” to be precise—a 20-pound cake darkened by molasses and boasting 8 pounds of combined raisins, currants, and citron. The original manuscript of the Read More
A Stellar Intern
By Vicki Denby, Manuscript End Processor, Technical Services Department, Houghton Library This past spring, Houghton Library Technical Services had the superluminous pleasure of working with Zoe Padilla, a senior at Cambridge Rindge and Latin School (CRLS). This is the seventh consecutive year we been able to hire a paid intern from CRLS to learn about Read More
An “Old Prayer Book”, Yet Not “a ‘dull’ one”: The Liber ordinarius of Nivelles
By Jeffrey F. Hamburger, Department of Art & Architecture, Harvard University Edmund Bishop, the famous historian of Catholic liturgy, once posed the question: “Is the subject ‘An Old Prayer Book’ a ‘dull’ one?” Tongue-in-cheek, he replied that he would prefer the dullest form possible, namely, a tabulation of its contents, adding that “any subject Read More
Longfellow Rides Again
By Vicki Denby, Houghton Library Technical Services A Houghton Library manuscript, on loan as part of the exhibition Beyond Midnight: Paul Revere, will once again be on public view when the Concord Museum reopens on August 6, 2020.