The curious discovery was related by Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) to Jan Ingenhousz (1730-1799) in this week’s letter, which is from Houghton’s Autograph File. Ingenhousz was physician to the court of Austria at the time, and a fellow of the Royal Society who later settled in England. Franklin was in London for his extended second trip…
Want to wash away your sins???
These “heavenly scented” towelettes are just one example of recently cataloged objects found in the Fredric Woodbridge Wilson Collection of Theater, Dance, and Music in the Harvard Theatre Collection. In addition to hot pepper candy and a rubber pencil other examples include…
Let’s Go to the Hop
[Thanks to Ward Project Music Cataloger Andrea Cawelti for contributing this post] You know your Friday afternoon is looking up when you open a 19th century dance treatise and stumble across the phrase “first, give all the ladies a vegetable….” An early donation by the late John Milton Ward, Charles Périn’s wonderful guide to the…
You’ve Got Mail: Compliments to Dr. Cohen
A curiosity in life, Chang Bunker (1811-1874) and Eng Bunker (1811-1874), the famous conjoined twins, leave us with this most curious thank you note. The experience of cataloging this letter led to some interesting observations. Chang and Eng spent every moment of their lives together but there is some evidence that they did try to…
From Vivien Leigh to The Beatles: Angus McBean’s Photographs Online
The Harvard Theatre Collection is currently in the midst of a multi-year project to catalog and digitize the Angus McBean Collection of theatrical photographs. The collection consists of over 30,000 glass plate negatives and their accompanying contact proofs. Angus McBean was born in 1904 in Newport, South Wales, England. As a youth he was a…
You’ve Got Mail: “Singapore, withal, right on the equator!”
As a young man of 26, printer Alfred North was so full of passions, doubts and pronouncements of great surety that, though his pen yielded constrained, constant little lines, his thoughts could hardly be whittled into expression, even through the long, looping sentences that filled page upon page of his correspondence. This was especially true…
You’ve Got Mail: The History of One of My Toes
This posting inaugurates a new weekly feature on the Houghton Library blog, “You’ve Got Mail,” based on letters in Houghton Library. Every Friday this year a Houghton staff member will select a letter from the diverse collections in the Library and put that letter into context. It is our hope that this feature will introduce…
New on OASIS in January
Finding aids for 15 newly cataloged collections, and preliminary box lists for four recent acquisitions, have been added to the OASIS database this month, including Gilbert & Sullivan cigarette cards, human curiosities prints, and more….