Posted in Houghton Library on Apr 15th, 2014 Comments Off on Unmodified sexuality
This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items from the Julio Mario Santo Domingo Collection. We return to the occult in this week’s feature from the Santo Domingo Collection. Today’s author is Austin Osman Spare, an English artist, writer, and occultist active in the first half of the twentieth century. While Spare’s finely-wrought […]
Posted in Houghton Library on Mar 18th, 2014 Comments Off on A quaint and curious volume of [not-so-]forgotton lore
This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items from the newly acquired Santo Domingo collection. This 1882 volume of Poe’s poetry and essays, accompanied by biographical information and commentary on the poems, is a fine example of the publishers’ cloth bindings of its period. In response to broadening literacy and therefore increasing demand, […]
Posted in Houghton Library on Mar 4th, 2014 Comments Off on L’Incal
This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items from the newly acquired Santo Domingo collection. Julio Santo Domingo collected books across many forms; among them is the graphic novel. Pictured here is one of the great collaborations in French comics: L’Incal, written by Alejandro Jodorowsky, the Chilean-born French filmmaker, actor, and author, and […]
Posted in Houghton Library on Mar 3rd, 2014 Comments Off on The Curious Equations of William Empson
The heavily annotated books seen here belonged not to a famous mathematician or physicist but to the English literary critic and poet William Empson (1906-1984), best known for his first book, Seven Types of Ambiguity: A Study of its Effects on English Verse (1930), which established Empson, seemingly overnight, as one of the most important […]
Posted in Houghton Library on Feb 18th, 2014 Comments Off on La Danse Macabre
This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items from the Julio Mario Santo Domingo collection. Eros, it should now be obvious, is intrinsic to the Santo Domingo Collection; it follows that Thanatos can’t be far behind. This lavish volume by Éditions Kra is entitled La Danse Macabre, and consists of twenty images by the […]
Posted in Houghton Library on Feb 7th, 2014 Comments Off on Newly cataloged: American broadsides
As part of an ongoing effort to provide access to Houghton’s rich broadside collections, a three-month cataloging project was completed last fall. Funded by the Ruth Miller Memorial Philanthropic Fund, which has provided long-time support of Houghton’s effort to reduce its number of “hidden collections,” cataloger Hyo Lee processed an eclectic group of about 500 […]
Posted in Houghton Library, Uncategorized on Feb 4th, 2014 Comments Off on The adventures of I-Am-The-Man
This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items from the Julio Mario Santo Domingo collection. Today’s feature is Etidorhpa, or The end of the earth, a fantastical novel by pharmacologist John Uri Lloyd, written in the hollow-earth mold of Jules Verne’s Journey to the center of the earth. The title is, as observant […]
Posted in Houghton Library, Uncategorized on Jan 21st, 2014 1 Comment »
This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items from the newly acquired Santo Domingo collection. This recently-cataloged volume from the Santo Domingo Collection appears to be an unexceptional 1932 printing of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland: the book’s illustrated covers have faded, and its acidic paper stock has gone from white to tan. […]
Posted in Houghton Library on Jan 10th, 2014 Comments Off on Snow vogue
This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items from the newly acquired Santo Domingo collection. The depredations of the drug trade are fertile ground for crime and mystery fiction: pulp, in a word. In the Santo Domingo Collection, these lurid works stand on the shelves alongside opium-inspired poetry and countercultural acid narratives. Pictured […]
Posted in Houghton Library, Uncategorized on Nov 8th, 2013 Comments Off on A sumptuous edition of Pierre Louÿs’s unpublished poems
This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items from the newly acquired Santo Domingo collection. A particularly sumptuous volume from the collection of Gérard Nordmann is today’s Santo Domingo Collection feature. This 1938 publication of Poèmes inédits (Unpublished poems) by Pierre Louÿs was limited to 109 numbered copies; this is copy 5. Louÿs […]
Posted in Houghton Library on Sep 25th, 2013 Comments Off on Gigantic bats in Space!
This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items from the newly acquired Santo Domingo collection. Voyage dans la lune avant 1900 is an extraordinary French children’s book that is composed primarily of color lithographs by Herold & Cie., which are based on the original designs of A. de Ville d’Avray’s. Almost nothing about […]
Posted in Houghton Library on Nov 7th, 2012 Comments Off on Every flower needs a dream
This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items from the newly acquired Santo Domingo collection. Les fleurs animées is a beautiful lithographic collection in two volumes that was illustrated in the mid 19th-century by J.J. Grandville, whose real name was Jean Ignace Isidore Gérard. The book imagines a world where the flowers are able […]
Posted in Houghton Library on Jun 1st, 2011 Comments Off on Early Updike papers temporarily closed to researchers
For many years, early John Updike manuscripts—the gift of the author during his lifetime—have been available to researchers in the Houghton Reading Room. When the remainder of the archive was purchased from the author’s estate in 2009, this early portion remained open for research while the newly acquired material was off-limits until cataloged. Processing of […]
Posted in Houghton Library on Mar 15th, 2011 Comments Off on Havana panoramas receive conservation treatment
Several months ago, Assistant Curator of Early Modern Books and Manuscripts John Overholt was in the Houghton stacks when he happened upon a brown paper-wrapped package tied with twine. We soon discovered that the package contained previously unknown photographs of Spanish fortifications Havana, from 1899 or 1900. The photographs were sent to the photo conservators […]
Posted in Houghton Library on Feb 14th, 2011 2 Comments »
Just in time for the holiday, we’ve acquired a collection of nearly 40 hand-drawn valentines. Most likely all the work of one artist, the valentines were probably created in the UK between 1850 and 1860. The practice of exchanging paper valentines was popularized in the early 19th century, and mass-produced valentines were made available by […]
Posted in Houghton Library on Jan 31st, 2011 1 Comment »
“Charles Olson, 1910-1970: a Centennial Selection from the Ralph Maud Collection,” on exhibit in Houghton Library’s Chaucer case (on the ground floor) since November 3, will be extended through February 7. The exhibition celebrates both the centennial of the birth of this influential American poet, and the 2009 gift to the Houghton of the Ralph […]
Posted in Houghton Library on Jan 24th, 2011 10 Comments »
The summer of 2010 saw the debut of the department’s Dickinson portal, one-stop shopping for those who want to discover Dickinson-related resources at Harvard. The portal announced the beginning of a project to digitize books in the Dickinson Family Library, to provide wider access to these often-fragile volumes. Three new titles have just been added, […]
Posted in Houghton Library on Sep 29th, 2010 Comments Off on John Updike’s library cataloged and available for use
The book portion of the John Updike Archive is now cataloged and available for research use. The 1,635 volumes establish Updike as his own greatest collector. For example, the collection includes roughly ninety editions and printings of Rabbit, Run, including those in translation. Many of these volumes bear Updike’s annotations, which not only correct typographical […]
Posted in Houghton Library on Jun 18th, 2010 1 Comment »
While we don’t usually acquire multiple copies of the same book, we broke that rule with two recent accessions. Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805) published Das Lied von der Glocke (“The Song of the Bell”) in 1798. It remains one of the most well-known German poems, and has been translated into many languages. In 1873, the Dryden […]
Posted in Houghton Library on Mar 23rd, 2010 Comments Off on Emerson as fund-raiser for Harvard College
In the summer of 1869, Transcendentalist philosopher, essayist, and famed Concordian Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) was presented with a challenging task. Harvard College assigned him to obtain donations from fellow members of the Class of 1821. The College wished to raise a sum of $500,000, a substantial sum even today. Emerson did not rush to […]
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