By Dale Stinchcomb, Assistant Curator of the Harvard Theatre Collection, Houghton Library Even for a dance company as innovative as the Ballets Russes, the staging of “Les Noces” (“The Wedding”) in 1923 was a radical leap forward. Bronislava Nijinska’s raw evocation of a peasant wedding has been called feminist in its portrayal of a bride Read More
Collections in Focus
The Castañé Collection Series: “Three: Marshal Zhukov’s Pocket Knife”
By Michael Austin, Manuscript Cataloger, Houghton Library The José María Castañé collection of material relating to major conflicts of the 20th century, held by Houghton Library, contains an incredible variety of artifacts: chiefly papers, such as correspondence, military orders, work permits, and personal identification cards, but also a significant number of photographs and objects. In Read More
New Pages to Turn: Recent Additions to Houghton’s Theodore Roosevelt Collection
By Gregory Wynn In his recently published memoir, Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer Robert Caro recounts that an early career admonishment from an editor to “turn every page” while investigating a story was one of the best pieces of advice he had ever been given (Working: Researching, Interviewing, Writing, 2019, p. 11). This call to thoroughness and Read More
A Mysterious Manuscript in a Banned Language
By Christine E. Jacobson, Assistant Curator, Modern Books and Manuscripts, Houghton Library Houghton recently acquired a nineteenth-century bilingual manuscript of Ukrainian and Russian folk songs and verse. At first glance, the work seems unremarkable. At 370 pages, it contains over 120 poems and songs, including well-known works by Alexander Pushkin and Taras Shevchenko as well Read More
The Castañé Collection Series: “Two: Officer’s Photo Album”
By Michael Austin, Manuscript Cataloger, Houghton Library In my first post on Houghton Library’s holdings from the Castañé collection of documents and objects relating to European conflicts of the 20th century, I focused on two particularly poignant items: a ration card issued to a young Polish girl early in the Second World War and an Read More