Our colleagues at the Cambridge University Library Incunabula Project are seeking help in identifying the former owners of several books now in their collections. As one of the marks, a bookstamp apparently belonging to a member of the Strozzi family of Florence, is also found in a Houghton volume, we’re hopeful someone will be able Read More

To the various epithets used to describe Gore Vidal—“elegant,” “acerbic,” “provocative,” “witty”—should be added “generous.” Harvard was the receipient of a magnificent gift from Mr. Vidal, his papers, in 2002. Vidal first began to consider Harvard as a home for his papers while working with the late Lincoln scholar David Donald, Charles Warren Professor of Read More

Among the letters collected in three morocco-bound autograph albums by Massachusetts senator, abolitionist, and bibliophile Charles Sumner is one from Lorenzo Da Ponte, best remembered as Mozart’s librettist for Le Mariage de Figaro, Don Giovanni, and Così fan tutte, to England’s future “Prince of Librarians,” Antonio Panizzi. The letter was written on behalf of a Read More

Finding aids for 10 newly cataloged collections have been added to the OASIS database this month, including the papers of the influential drama educator, Harvard’s George Pierce Baker.

Here is a letter, written on papyrus, from Apion, a man of property, to his son of the same name and also to Horion, either a close friend of the family or an unspecified relation. Apion’s concerns are those of any businessman: balancing debits and credits, keeping up with his civic duties, minding his real Read More