Who was La Jaguarina? Born Ella Hattan in 1859 in Zanesville, Ohio she was originally a professional actress that performed with theater greats Edwin Booth and Dion Boucicault. Oddly enough she also trained in fencing and sword play with Colonel Thomas Hoyer Monstery, a 19th century Danish-American mercenary, duelist, and fencing and boxing instructor. …
New on OASIS in December
Finding aids for 16 newly cataloged collections have been added to the OASIS database this month, including Parisian ephemera, Gilbert & Sullivan sheet music, and more….
Saluting The Swerve
Congratulations to Harvard’s Stephen Greenblatt, Cogan University Professor of the Humanities, for winning this year’s National Book Award for non-fiction for his book The Swerve: How the World Became Modern. The Swerve concerns the rediscovery of the philosophical poem De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things), written in the first century BC by Titus…
New on OASIS in November
Finding aids for 8 newly cataloged collections have been added to the OASIS database this month, including photos and letters of the actors Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree and Lady Maud Tree, and letters to Harvard President Joseph Willard from his sons….
Horrors of the Grand Guignol
[Thanks to Micah Hoggatt, Reference Assistant, for contributing this post.] Once a year at Halloween we surround ourselves with horror and fright for a day. From 1897 to 1962, terror was enjoyed regularly in Montmartre. Le Théâtre du Grand-Guignol may have inhabited a former church (retaining the confessional seating and carved, suspended angels), but it…
Please make a note of it
[Thanks to William Stoneman, Florence Fearrington Librarian of Houghton Library, for contributing this post.] I am pleased to announce a major acquisition of a collection of sixteenth-century annotated books from the English bookseller Roger Gaskell. Ann M. Blair, Henry Charles Lea Professor of History and Harvard College Professor, encouraged this acquisition. She is the author…
New digitization roundup
[Thanks to Emilie Hardman, Public Services/Metadata Assistant, for contributing this post] Newly digitized items at Houghton include a significant array of material from manuscript collections, such as the Robert Gould Shaw papers, Mary Moody Emerson’s Almanac, the letters of Christophe Daniel Ebeling letters to William Bentley, research materials from the Charles S. Peirce collection, charmingly…
Woodberry Poetry Room Online
[Thanks to Christina Davis, Curator of the Woodberry Poetry Room, for contributing this post.] On the occasion of our 80th anniversary, the Woodberry Poetry Room at Harvard University is proud to announce the creation of a new website that offers scholars and poetry-readers worldwide the opportunity to encounter rare and heretofore inaccessible recordings from its…
Greek Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in Houghton Library
[Thanks to William Stoneman, Florence Fearrington Librarian of Houghton Library, for contributing this post.] We congratulate Nadezhda Kavrus-Hoffmann on the publication of the third and final installment of her Catalogue of Greek Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in Houghton Library which has appeared in Manuscripta: A Journal of Manuscript Research 55.1 (2011), 1-108. Earlier installments appeared…
New on OASIS in October
Finding aids for 7 newly cataloged collections, and a preliminary box list for one recent acquisition, have been added to the OASIS database this month, including science fiction fanzines and art, and Amy Lowell’s collection of literary and historical manuscripts….