The Liberty Fund is following a plan first devised by Thomas Hollis over 200 years ago and making available “once again a selection of titles originally distributed to the colonies by one of the most remarkable philanthropists and supporters of American independence, the eighteenth-century Englishman Thomas Hollis.” Hollis (1720-1774) distributed books and pamphlets, to Harvard Read More

In this week’s mail bag, a touch of levity and an epic scandal. A letter to American raconteur Alexander Woollcott from British author Marie Belloc Lowndes dated April 28, 1937, begins, “Dearest Alec, Here are two little news stories of those royal children.” I wish I’d come across this letter back in June during the Read More

As the Curator of the Hyde Collection, I’m very pleased that the distinguished antiquarian bookseller Arthur Freeman has shared with us an exciting discovery about the significance of an item in the collection. The Shakespeare forgeries of William Henry Ireland have long intrigued scholars and captured the public imagination. But Ireland’s practice later in life Read More

  “If you go down in the woods today you better not go alone It’s lovely down in the woods today but safer to stay at home”   Don’t blame composer John Walter Bratton if your children are scared by these song lyrics. Composed in 1907, Bratton’s The Teddy Bears Picnic did not actually contain any Read More

The recipient of this 1601 Galileo letter is Giovanni Battista Strozzi, a member of a wealthy and powerful Florentine family, whose status is reflected in the flattery Galileo lavishes on a poem Strozzi has sent him. The very beautiful poem and the most pleasing letter from you, Sir, have given me double contentment, the latter Read More