By Joseph Gauvreau, Ph.D. candidate in Comparative Literature. Joseph was a summer 2018 Pforzheimer Fellow in Harvard Library. Working closely with Christina Linklater (a Houghton music cataloger and keeper of the Isham Memorial Library in the Loeb Music Library), he reported a number of Harvard’s music manuscript holdings to RISM. Joseph’s essay is published in Read More
Research
An Intimate and Symbolic Bond: Quentin Roosevelt, the Great War, and American-French Relations
By Vincent Harmsen, 2017–2018 Houghton Library Visiting Fellow and recipient of the William Dearborn Fellowship in American History. Mr. Harmsen holds a master’s degree in history from the Sorbonne University, Paris. November 19, 1918 would have been the twenty-first birthday of Quentin Roosevelt, son of Theodore Roosevelt. However, Quentin had died in France a few Read More
Looking Beyond the Text in Frances Wolfreston’s Books
By Sarah Lindenbaum In the introduction of Marks in Books, Roger Stoddard’s catalogue of his 1984 exhibit on marginalia and other book traces, he writes, “As anthropologists have discovered, traces of wear can tell us how artifacts were used by human beings. Books no less than tools, apparel, and habits can show signs of wear, Read More
Translated for Action: Gabriel Harvey’s Grammar-Drama
This post was written by Andrew S. Keener, Assistant Professor, Department of English, Santa Clara University. A recipient of the Katharine F. Pantzer Jr. Fellowship in Descriptive Bibliography, Keener was a 2016–2017 Houghton Library Visiting Fellow. The sixteenth-century scholar Gabriel Harvey has fascinated researchers of early modern reading and handwriting for decades, but an investigation Read More
Summer Spotlight: John Wilkes Booth and the Theatre of Our Discontent
Not all the objects in Houghton Library’s collections have such illustrious, proud histories as a Shakespeare First Folio or Gutenberg Bible. Objects of less reputable association can provide just as striking of an encounter as these treasured relics, however. During the behind-the-scenes tour of Houghton on my first day of work at the library, I Read More