Today marks the 116th anniversary of the death of Frederick Barnard. “Frederick who?” you might well ask. Though he’s not well known today, in late nineteenth-century London Fred Barnard was a highly regarded illustrator, caricaturist, and painter. He was considered one of the best “black and white artists” of his day. His pen and ink…
That Toddlin’ Time
Nineteen thirty was a mighty good year for social dance. Sure, the economic world had crashed in 1929, but the Depression hadn’t hit yet, and the growth of radio in the 1920s coupled with the rise of the Talkies since The Jazz Singer in 1927 insured that the popular dance music of the day inundated…
October Brings Two Winship Lectures
We are preparing for two George Parker Winship lectures this semester, one by Robert De Maria (25 October 2012) and the other by Roger Stoddard (11 October 2012). These will be the 95th and 96th lectures that were inaugurated under the fund established by the John Barnard Associates. Stoddard’s topic is “How I Found the…
You’ve Got Mail: An Unfortunate Candidate
On September 8, 1827, the French printer-lithographer J. Cluis wrote to the members of the jury for the Exhibition of Industrial Products (“Exposition des produits de l’Industrie”) to present his invention of “autography” (“autographie”). Little is known about Cluis except that he was active as a printer-lithographer from the 1820s to the 1840s in Paris,…
R.E.S. Ipsa Loquitur
Friends of Houghton Library will be pleased to learn that former Curator of Rare Books, Roger Eliot Stoddard, has presented to the Library a copy of his A Bibliographical Description of Books and Pamphlets of American Verse Printed from 1610 through 1820 published earlier this year by the Penn State University Press for the Bibliographical…
Our Two-Year Aeoniversary
It’s the two-year anniversary of the online Special Collections Request Account system (Aeon) at Harvard! Aeon is being used many in Harvard special collections including those at the Fine Arts Library, Loeb Music Library, and Harvard-Yenching. Here at Houghton Library, the largest Aeon user at Harvard, we moved completely into the world of electronic requests…
You’ve Got Mail: When the check isn’t in the mail
Sometime in late 1926 William Faulkner wrote to publisher and fellow poet William Stanley Braithwaite for help. The Boston-based publisher of his first book of verse, The Marble Faun, owed him $81 in unpaid royalties. For months his letters to the Four Seas Company had gone unanswered, save for confirmation that his one certified letter…
Houghton prepares for the new semester
Last week was orientation week at Harvard and Houghton was in high gear. Wednesday, Houghton joined the Archives and Special Collections table at Dudleyfest, the orientation fair for new Grad Students in Arts and Sciences. Thursday, Houghton participated in the Harvard College Library Freshman Open House hosted by Lamont Library. Reference Librarian James Capobianco introduced…
New on OASIS in September
Finding aids for 18 newly cataloged collections, and a preliminary box list for one recent acquisition, have been added to the OASIS database this month, including photographs of the Siege of Paris, original cartoons by Thomas Nast, and sheet music from TV shows….