One of the newly announced 2010 MacArthur Fellows, Nicholas Benson, has a special connection to Houghton Library: he created the beautiful slate sign that hangs over the entrance to the Edison and Newman Room, for its dedication in 2005. Benson is a third-generation stone carver, and his father carved the sign marking Blodgett Court, just…
Can We Risk the Abyss?
On October 12th, noted biographer Lyndall Gordon will speak at Houghton Library. Her talk, “‘Abyss has no biographer’: Can we risk the Abyss?” will focus on her recently published biography of Emily Dickinson, Lives like loaded guns: Emily Dickinson and her family’s feuds (2010). The book has stirred some controversy by proposing that the poet…
Look! Up in the Sky!
A new acquisition beautifully documents a landmark in the study of meteors. Shortly after 9:00 PM on the evening of August 18th, 1783, a fireball streaked across the night sky, and thanks to the warm and muggy weather, was widely observed. Perhaps the best constituted party of observers was gathered on the terrace at Windsor…
Life Among the Tuscarora
An HCL News article highlights a recent gift to Houghton–some two dozen letters written by Hannah Whitcomb, who, in in the mid-19th century lived for more than 25 years as a missionary with the Tuscarora tribe of Native Americans near Niagara Falls….
New Special Collections Request Accounts
Today, Houghton Library introduces a new special collections request system that allows patrons to register and place requests for materials online. This system replaces paper registration and paper forms to request materials to use in the library, and because it will eventually be HCL-wide, will eliminate the need for patrons to register separately at each…
Singers Through the Ages
[Thanks to Ward Project Music Cataloger Andrea Cawelti for contributing this post.] Who is this Adelina Patti mentioned so prominently in Anna Karenina? Why does Edith Wharton compare May to Christine Nilsson at the beginning of The Age of Innocence, and expect her readers to understand without further explanation? And what was it about the…
Johnny Green, Body and Soul
[Manuscript Cataloger Michael Austin recently completed a major project to catalog our extensive collection of papers relating to composer and Harvard alumnus Johnny Green. He contributed this post about Green and his collection.] If Johnny Green had listened to his father, the twentieth century would have been deprived of one of its greatest artists in…
New on OASIS in September
It’s been a busy month for the manuscript catalogers! Finding aids for 15 newly cataloged collections have been added to the OASIS database this month, including portraits of burlesque dancers, theatrical costume designs, ephemera from Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Shows, and manuscripts of the Nicaraguan writer Rubén Darío:…