The letters of Duff and Diana Cooper were selected and edited by her granddaughter, Artemis Cooper, and published in 1984 as A Durable Fire. She was a daughter of the Duke of Rutland and an actress; he was a Foreign Office diplomat. From 1923 through 1926 she toured America from November to March each year…
Medieval Sermons, On Display and Online
We are pleased to announce a new online exhibition, “A History of Medieval Christian Preaching,” prepared by Harvard Divinity School Professor Beverly Mayne Kienzle and her students. This site and an exhibition now on display in the Amy Lowell Room accompany a conference of the same name sponsored by Harvard University’s Standing Committee on Medieval…
You’ve Got Mail: A P.S. Without a Letter
Herman Melville was given this copy of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Mosses from an Old Manse (New York: Wiley and Putnam, 1846) in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, on July 18, 1850, by his “Aunt Mary,” according to his autograph inscription on the verso of the front free endpaper. Mary A. A. Hobart Melvill, the widow of Melville’s beloved Uncle…
Vidal Biography Coming in 2015
Until his death earlier this summer Gore Vidal played an important role in American society, that of a public intellectual who expressed himself forcefully on all manner of subjects. Fred Kaplan published a biography of Vidal in 1999 and it was reported in today’s New York Times that Jay Parini plans to publish a biography…
You’ve Got Mail: Sommartiden är här så ovanligt warmt
The mid-19th century saw a surge of immigration from Sweden to the United States. Many were farmers looking for new opportunities for land to work, and many were more well-off than typical immigrants from other European countries who were displaced by famine or poverty. Because they could afford to buy land and livestock, these Swedes…
Have you seen this bookstamp?
Our colleagues at the Cambridge University Library Incunabula Project are seeking help in identifying the former owners of several books now in their collections. As one of the marks, a bookstamp apparently belonging to a member of the Strozzi family of Florence, is also found in a Houghton volume, we’re hopeful someone will be able…
You’ve Got Mail: “We cannot feel sufficient confidence in our ability to make a success of your book”
Walter Hines Page is probably best known for his work as ambassador to England just before and during World War I, where he was instrumental in encouraging his long-time friend Woodrow Wilson to join the war effort. But before Page was a diplomat, he was a journalist and publisher, serving as editor of the Forum,…
Remembering Gore Vidal
To the various epithets used to describe Gore Vidal—“elegant,” “acerbic,” “provocative,” “witty”—should be added “generous.” Harvard was the receipient of a magnificent gift from Mr. Vidal, his papers, in 2002. Vidal first began to consider Harvard as a home for his papers while working with the late Lincoln scholar David Donald, Charles Warren Professor of…
You’ve Got Mail: “The brightest star in the heavens”
Among the letters collected in three morocco-bound autograph albums by Massachusetts senator, abolitionist, and bibliophile Charles Sumner is one from Lorenzo Da Ponte, best remembered as Mozart’s librettist for Le Mariage de Figaro, Don Giovanni, and Così fan tutte, to England’s future “Prince of Librarians,” Antonio Panizzi. The letter was written on behalf of a…
New on OASIS in August
Finding aids for 10 newly cataloged collections have been added to the OASIS database this month, including the papers of the influential drama educator, Harvard’s George Pierce Baker….