Finding aids for 18 newly cataloged collections, and a preliminary box list for one recent acquisition, have been added to the OASIS database this month, including photographs of the Siege of Paris, original cartoons by Thomas Nast, and sheet music from TV shows.

The letters of Duff and Diana Cooper were selected and edited by her granddaughter, Artemis Cooper, and published in 1984 as A Durable Fire. She was a daughter of the Duke of Rutland and an actress; he was a Foreign Office diplomat. From 1923 through 1926 she toured America from November to March each year Read More

Herman Melville was given this copy of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Mosses from an Old Manse (New York: Wiley and Putnam, 1846) in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, on July 18, 1850, by his “Aunt Mary,” according to his autograph inscription on the verso of the front free endpaper. Mary A. A. Hobart Melvill, the widow of Melville’s beloved Uncle Read More

Until his death earlier this summer Gore Vidal played an important role in American society, that of a public intellectual who expressed himself forcefully on all manner of subjects. Fred Kaplan published a biography of Vidal in 1999 and it was reported in today’s New York Times that Jay Parini plans to publish a biography Read More

The mid-19th century saw a surge of immigration from Sweden to the United States. Many were farmers looking for new opportunities for land to work, and many were more well-off than typical immigrants from other European countries who were displaced by famine or poverty. Because they could afford to buy land and livestock, these Swedes Read More