A promptbook I’ve been working on recently, The Amber Heart, by Alfred Calmour (1857?-1912), is bound in tan leather wrappers with its title stamped in gold on cover and spine. Inside, the covers are decorated with gorgeous red-violet marbled endpapers edged with intricate gold stamping. The book resides in a quarter tan calf and cloth case. It’s not one of those well-worn, frayed working scripts, full of hastily scrawled notes, but rather a treasured memento of a theatrical experience.
Ellen Terry, one of the most celebrated British Shakespearean actresses of the late 19th century/early 20th century, originated the main role of Ellaline in The Amber Heart, presented by actor-manager Henry Irving in 1887 in London, when she was 40 years old, 12 years later playing it in repertory with the Irving company in New York in 1899, with a return engagement in 1900. Here is an image of Terry in the role.
Ellen Terry’s family was a true British theatrical dynasty whose most famous members also include Ellen’s elder sister actress Kate Terry, her son the set designer Gordon Craig, and her nephew John Gielgud. The Theatre Collection copy is inscribed by Ellen Terry to her niece Minnie, daughter of her brother Charles Terry, and a noted child actress in Herbert Beerbohm Tree’s company by the time she was six years old. The inscription is dated “Christmas, 1902”; Ellen Terry would already have completed her successful Broadway run of the play.
Ellen Terry’s inscription in Minnie’s copy of the play
The brief ceremony that marked the opening of Houghton Library on 28 February 1942 took place only months after the United States had entered World War II following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Professor Charles K. Webster of the University of London was one of three speakers along with Harvard University President James Conant and donor Arthur A. Houghton, Jr. Webster had been Professor of History at Harvard from 1928 until 1932 when he became Stevenson Professor of International History at the London School of Economics and Political Science, but was there to represent the British Ambassador to the United States, His Excellency The Rt. Hon. Viscount Halifax. At this occasion an incunable copy of John of Salisbury’s Polycraticus, a treatise on political and ethical philosophy including a major exploration of the responsibilities of rulers and their people, was presented to Harvard University on behalf of the people of Great Britain. This edition was printed in Brussels between 1479 and 1481. Webster alluded in his remarks to the scholarship of the great Harvard professor Charles Homer Haskins and his work on the twelfth-century renaissance during which John of Salisbury wrote his treatise and the statement by Halifax read by Webster concluded on the appropriateness of this gift at this time. John of Salisbury’s ideal ruler:
The book presented (Walsh 3931; ISTC ij00425000), now 
Typically they attack the tender growth tips and buds and can injure plants by sucking the juices from both the stems and leaves of the plant as well as excreting honeydew which serves as a culture for black mold. Unchecked they will spread over the entire plant then move onto others. Aphids are only about one thirty-second of an inch long and are prodigious at producing offspring. Faber counsels that there are really only two choices, one involves going organic and using their natural enemies either the ladybug or the praying mantis and the second involves spraying with insecticide.
They can vary in color and are so tiny it takes a magnifying glass to see them clearly. Often you can only spot them by looking at the underside of the leaves where small dots of silver indicate the webs to which eggs are attached. They multiply quickly and your only option is spraying with insecticide again and again.
We’re happy to announce a new way of learning about the Houghton Library collections and the people that use them. The Houghton75 podcast! 
