To mark Vivien Leigh’s centenary year, we thought of reproducing here a few of the hundreds of portraits of her by photographer Angus McBean. McBean was the dean of theatrical portraiture for the London stage at midcentury. For over three decades Vivien Leigh was his muse. A single portrait—his favorite of her—hung in his home Read More
Collections in Focus
The Enduring Classical Tradition II
A second recent acquisition which reflects the theme of the Enduring Classical Tradition is Jeremiah Holmes Wiffen’s Verses Written in the Portico of the Temple of Liberty at Woburn Abbey, on the Placing before it the Statues of Locke and Erskine, in the summer of 1835. London: James Moyes, 1836. According to the colophon in the Read More
The Enduring Classical Tradition I
This is the first of a series of posts about recent acquisitions by the Department of Early Books and Manuscripts in Houghton Library of classical material which reflect the continuing use of material that falls inside and outside the Department’s traditional chronological division (material before 1600) of the Library’s curatorial departments. The first is Jacques Charpentier Read More
The Oldest Student in France and the Champion of the World
The Department of Modern Books and Manuscripts has recently acquired a set of 29 business cards produced between the late 1800s and the 1930s in France (FC9.D4751.Q890c). A good deal of information was packed onto these small, square pieces of paperboard as the people for whom they were made did not shy away from vaunting Read More
Houghton Acquires an Astronomical Rarity
One of the strengths of our collection is in the history of astronomy, and particularly an outstanding collection of the works of Johannes Kepler. So I’m very pleased to announce that we have just acquired the rarest work in Kepler’s bibliography, Ad Rerum Coelestium Amatores Universos … De Solis Deliquio. This slim volume documents an Read More