Modern Books and Manuscripts

We’ve decided to join the current trend of weekly series in special collections blogs and start one of our own, and so we proudly introduce the “Bookplate of the Week” series! For nearly five years, student assistants in Modern Books & Manuscripts have been cataloging Houghton’s enormous and previously “hidden” collection of bookplates. Lists of […]

Read Full Post »

Two exhibitions, organized by the Modern department, are now on view at Houghton:   Louisa May Alcott: Family Life and Publishing Ventures Curated by Joel Myerson and Daniel Sheely April 2 – May 26, 2012 In May 1868, when beginning Little Women, Louisa May Alcott wrote, “Never liked girls or knew many, except my sisters, […]

Read Full Post »

We’ve recently acquired a collection of 50 issues of 40 amateur newspapers, produced in the United States and Canada between 1882 and 1887. Many of these papers appeared following the adoption in the 1860s of inexpensive hobby presses for use by amateur printers. Amateur newspaper societies fostered communication and exchange between the teenage proprieters, which […]

Read Full Post »

If you prefer your Valentine’s Day imbued with a bit of tragic Romantic poetry, we have the perfect treat for you. The Modern Books and Manuscripts department at Houghton is pleased to announce a new online exhibition: “I shall ever be your dearest love”: John Keats and Fanny Brawne An expansion of a popular 2010 […]

Read Full Post »

While reviewing issues of Scribner’s Monthly Illustrated Magazine which belonged to Emily Dickinson and her family, Modern Books & Manuscripts student assistant Anna Patel came across this page in the July 1879 issue: The drawings, which appear in an installment of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s novel Haworth’s are, alas, unsigned, and whether they were made by a […]

Read Full Post »

[Thanks to Anna Patel, student assistant in Modern Books and Manuscripts, for contributing this post] Houghton Library has recently acquired an exciting collection of Parisian ephemera from the end of the 19th century to the 20th. The materials range from playbills for the Folies Bergère Music Hall to hotel-provided monument maps to exhibition handbooks. Among […]

Read Full Post »

A new page has been added to the Modern Books & Manuscripts website to provide information on the recently-cataloged Houghton Library Science Fiction Collection. Cataloging of the collection was made possible by the Ruth Miller Memorial Philanthropic Fund. The website includes information on how to locate and access materials within the collection, as well as […]

Read Full Post »

We’ve recently acquired “The Star Trek Guide”, a photo-copied booklet distributed to the writers working on the original series of the television show. The guide explains each character (Captain Kirk is described as “a space-age Horatio Hornblower”) and aspects of the show’s mythology, reviews available set and costume limitations: …details the standard episode format: … […]

Read Full Post »

Here’s an early Halloween “treat” for followers of the ongoing digitization of the Dickinson family library.  It’s been longer than we anticipated since the last digital book appeared, a pause caused by a switch in software in our imaging department.  Now, however, the bugs seem to be fixed, and we hope to resume a steadier […]

Read Full Post »

In 1862, Boston native and Union army officer Robert Gould Shaw took command of the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry Regiment, the nation’s first all-black regiment. While leading the regiment, Shaw wrote several hundred letters to his parents, sisters, and wife, which constitute one of the main sources of information on the regiment from this period. […]

Read Full Post »

From the collection of Boston caricaturist David Claypoole Johnston (1798-1865), a few prototypes of some Civil War-era metamorphosis cards: Pull the tab at the bottom, and Davis’s expression changes:

Read Full Post »

This post was kindly contributed by Andrea Cawelti, Ward Project Music Cataloger at Houghton: Pauline Garcia Viardot (1821-1910) was one of the 19th century’s most versatile and influential opera stars.  Born into an operatic family (her father Manuel Garcia created the role of Almaviva in Rossini’s Il Barbiere di Siviglia, later becoming a renowned voice […]

Read Full Post »

Today marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863). To honor Thackeray’s birth, Houghton Library is hosting the exhibition The Adventures of Thackeray in His Way Through the World: His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Family, on display from July 18 through October 15, 2011. The exhibition includes manuscripts […]

Read Full Post »

Christoph Irmscher, professor of English at Indiana University, and the guest curator of Houghton Library’s 2007 exhibition “Public Poet, Private Man: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow at 200,” has contributed a post to the Library of America’s Reader’s Almanac blog on the tragic death of Longfellow’s wife Fanny Appleton Longfellow. Image: *2001M-8. Houghton Library, Harvard University. Purchased […]

Read Full Post »

“The Bible is an antique Volume – / Written by faded Men / At the suggestion of Holy Spectres -” (Fr 1577) Was Emily Dickinson a religious person? She attended church services as a child, and the Dickinsons held daily religious observation in their home.  But she rejected the religious revivalism that was so prominent […]

Read Full Post »

If you were unable to join us last week for A. Kingsley Porter University Professor Helen Vendler’s talk, titled “Emily Dickinson and the Sublime,” an audio recording is now available to stream here:  http://hcl.harvard.edu/libraries/houghto… And be sure to join our weekly Houghton Library tour, Fridays at 2 PM, to view the Emily Dickinson Room and a […]

Read Full Post »

You are cordially invited to Emily Dickinson and the Sublime A talk by Helen Vendler, Arthur Kingsley Porter University Professor, Harvard University; and author of Dickinson: Selected Poems and Commentaries (2010) 31 March 2011 5.30 P.M. Edison and Newman Room Houghton Library, Harvard University Admission is free, and open to the public. Space is limited. […]

Read Full Post »

37 audio tapes from the Solidarity Collection, an archive of Poland’s “Solidarność” independent trade union movement in the 1970s and 1980s, have recently been digitized. Andrea Bohlman, a doctoral candidate in Historical Musicology in the Harvard University Department of Music, contributed a post on the tapes to the blog of the Loeb Music Library, available […]

Read Full Post »

The Houghton Library’s Dickinson Collection holds one of only two authenticated portraits of Emily Dickinson: the 1840 Otis Allen Bullard portrait of the three Dickinson children. Ten-year-old Emily is depicted holding a rose and a book illustrated with flowers, indicating her early interest in gardening and nature; Lavinia holds a drawing of a cat (unlike […]

Read Full Post »

A list of print items in the Modern Books and Manuscripts department accessioned from July 2009 through June 2010 can now be viewed online here:  http://tinyurl.com/3aahave Accessions included books from the John Updike Book Archive, a complete collection of the publications of Argentine writer Juan Filloy, and many others. Books found in the list linked […]

Read Full Post »