Month: November 2009

Front facade of Houghton Library

London as it was

Houghton’s newest exhibition, “London As It Is” opens tomorrow, and runs through April of next year. Highlighting the work of artist Thomas Shotter Boys and his book of the same name, the exhibition details each step of Boys’ artistic process, from original sketches to the finished, hand colored scenes of 19th century London….

Cutting remarks

Richard S. Field, Curator Emeritus of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs, Yale University Art Gallery, will give this year’s Philip and Frances Hofer Lecture, on Thursday, December 3, 2009, 5:30 pm, in Houghton’s Edison and Newman Room. Entitled “Cutting Remarks: The Preparation of Woodcuts, 1400-1600”, the talk will discuss the history of the physical craft of…

Winward Prescott Bookplate Collection

[This post adapted from Kenneth Carpenter’s Reader’s Choice exhibition in the Houghton Library ] The largest component of Houghton Library’s notable bookplate collection was the gift of Winward Prescott, class of 1909. Prescott’s interest in bookplates was clearly lifelong, for as early as 1914 he published a bibliography of bookplate literature, which he revised and…

Picturing Prayer

Picturing Prayer: Books of Hours in Houghton Library, Harvard University is a new website devoted to examples of this prevalent form of the medieval book. The site examines the various parts of a typical book of hours, and provides ten examples from Houghton collections, digitized in high resolution from cover to cover, utilizing page-turning software….

Harry Elkins Widener remembered

Our newest online exhibition examines two crucial figures in the history of the Harvard College Library, Harry Elkins Widener, and his mother Eleanor, who gave Harvard both Harry’s outstanding collection of books and manuscripts, and the library that memorializes him….

Tennessee Williams Additional Papers

Cataloging has recently been completed on the Harvard Theatre Collection’s Tennessee Williams Additional Papers, 1946-1983, ( MS Thr 550.) Details can be found in the finding aid created by senior manuscripts cataloger Bonnie B. Salt. These papers join a wealth of Tennessee Williams material at the Houghton Library and the Harvard Theatre Collection, most notably…