More recently digitized items at Houghton include “whimsical exuberances too tedious to mention” (…like the satirical broadside from which that line comes…), stunningly colored Dürer woodcuts, letters and postcards from Marina Tsvetaeva, a letter from Rembrant, the Olney hymns manuscript, an 18th century Italian work on fortifications with illustrations by Prince Raimondo di Sangro Sansevero,…
You’ve Got Mail: A bit of blackmail with that redemption?
Not surprisingly given his monumental achievements in the opera world, Richard Wagner was a bit of a control freak. We have ample evidence in his correspondence and even in the operas themselves, of back-room negotiation, power plays, and even the occasional blackmail of one kind or another. The complex performance and publication history of Tannhäuser…
New UK stamp honoring Kathleen Ferrier uses McBean Collection photo
The already immortal English contralto Kathleen Ferrier (1912-1953) has just been further immortalized in a postage stamp from the British Royal Mail in its “Britons of Distinction” series. Other Britons in the series include Frederick Delius, Thomas Newcomen and Joan Mary Fry. The image used, this gorgeous shot of Ferrier as Orfeo in Gluck’s 1762…
Recently Digitized Works
An exciting array of materials have recently been digitized at Houghton. They include manuscript material from Joanna Baillie, George Eliot, John Keats, Charles Lamb, Percy Shelley, Robert Southey, Alfred Tennyson, Hester Thrale and George Washington. A 15th century breviary and Belgian incunable, multiple musical scores, cartoons, broadsides and more may also be viewed fully online….
You’ve Got Mail: The Lilliput Edition
One thinks of Houghton Library as a repository of the very old and the very special but it is also — in its association with Harvard Review — a publisher of the very new. For more than a decade, Houghton has been the home of Harvard’s only professional literary journal, publishing the likes of Seamus…
Houghton Visiting Fellowship Recipients, 2012-13
Each year, Houghton awards visiting fellowships to support scholars whose research requires the use of Houghton collections. We are pleased to announce the awarding of 21 fellowships for the 2012-13 fiscal year:…
Houghton’s Primeros Libros
The Houghton Library recently digitized several books to be added to the digital library Los Primeros Libros de las Américas: A Digital Library of 16th Century Colonial Mexican Imprints. Starting in 1539 with the first book of the Americas, Breve y mas compediosa doctrina Cristiana en lengua Mexicana y castellana (of which no copies survive),…
Burlesque beauties
What makes a good burlesque striptease dancer? As former performer Jane Woods aka “Shawna St. Clair” from the Golden Days of Burlesque Historical Society would say one who “…learned the art of removing her costume, inch by inch, slowly and sensuously, with smoothness and grace. She never lost the beat of the music, nor forgot…
You’ve Got Mail: “Excuse the Unpoliteness of a Printed Letter”
A new acquisition in in the Early Modern Books and Manuscripts Department shows the inner workings of what one might think of as the 18th century precursor to Craigslist: the Universal Register Office. The Office was founded in 1751 by Sir John Fielding, the blind magistrate who played a crucial role in creating London’s first…
You’ve Got Mail: “We return on the maiden voyage of the Titanic”
One hundred years ago this week, Harry Elkins Widener, Harvard class of 1907, wrote this letter to his friend and advisor Luther Livingston. He begins: “Just a few lines to tell you I am about make a quick trip to England. We sail on Wednesday at 1 a.m. on the Mauretania and return on April…