This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items from the newly acquired Santo Domingo collection. As the French Revolution erupted in 1789, the bourgeoisie took up a variety of arms against the aristocracy; among them was literature. Pictured here from the Santo Domingo Collection is La Messaline françoise, a libelous account, published under Read More
Emilie Hardman
The Vetālapañcaviṃśati, A Manuscript Divided
The Vetālapañcaviṃśati, or the twenty-five tales of the corpse-possessing spirit, is an Indian story collection dating back to at least the 11th century CE. The framing narrative tells the story of a king who is tricked into helping an ascetic perform a necromantic ritual in a cremation ground. The king is tasked with the fetching Read More
April Fun: Peirce’s Puzzler
Riddle: What does a semiotician do for fun? Answer: For your amusement this April Fools’ Day, we offer a rebus from the papers of American philosopher and scientist Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914). Peirce (pronounced like “purse”), a scholar of astonishingly wide-ranging interests, was best known in philosophy for his theory of “pragmatism,” but he made many Read More
You’ve Got Mail: “If you can read this … you can read me.”
And now I’ll tell you a [ ] secret secrets, wrote Mrs. Patrick Campbell, scribbling in dull pencil to George Bernard Shaw on December 9, 1912, some months after her wickedly coquettish reply to the offer that she play Eliza in his Pygmalion. That the part of Eliza Doolittle, Cockney flower girl, was crafted by Read More
Recently Digitized Works
More recently digitized items at Houghton include “whimsical exuberances too tedious to mention” (…like the satirical broadside from which that line comes…), stunningly colored Dürer woodcuts, letters and postcards from Marina Tsvetaeva, a letter from Rembrant, the Olney hymns manuscript, an 18th century Italian work on fortifications with illustrations by Prince Raimondo di Sangro Sansevero, Read More