This week’s roundup includes an unfinished manuscript by Alexandre Dumas, a 1609 Shakespeare quarto, and the uncut 7-volume manuscript of an early-20th century utopian novel….
What’s New: Méhul figures some bass
John M. Ward, one of the Theatre Collection’s most generous donors, cherished great admiration for the composers who survived the French Revolution. Cherubini, Paër, and Méhul were particular favorites, and Ward collected their music extensively. Believing as he did that keeping one’s head through such interesting times demanded special characteristics, he hoped that the materials…
New Digitization Roundup, Part I
It’s been a while since we updated you on the new digitization activity that is constantly going on here at Houghton, so here is a sampling of some of the items we’ve recently digitized in their entirety. This batch includes papers from the Dreyfus Affair, a Tchaikovsky score, and letters from the journalist and radical…
“Footprints on the sands of time”
Rejecting the Psalmist’s solemn emphasis on death and the life hereafter, Cambridge poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in “A Psalm of Life” famously exhorts his readers to seize the day and leave their mark in this world: Lives of great men all remind us We can make our lives sublime, And, departing, leave behind us Footprints…
Reading Ira Aldridge
Readers of The New Yorker may have noticed the recent article by Alex Ross on the great 19th century African-American actor and expatriate Ira Aldridge and his daughter Luranah. An abundance of related material (printed books, ephemera, manuscripts – even an entire extra-illustrated album devoted to Aldridge and formerly owned by Augustin Daly) can be…
Good things also come in fancy packages
Having recently taken a course on the history of binding at Rare Book School, I’m more aware than ever of the splendid bindings sitting on our shelves unnoticed. The binding of a book or score is not always indicated in its catalog record, depending on when the item was cataloged, so I recently stumbled completely…
Box its ears and send it home
If this book should chance to roam/ Box its ears and send it home That bit of doggerel has been inscribed on books for many years in the hopes that if lost, they would be returned to the rightful owner. It came to mind when the story of a book roaming from our collections was…
Double vision?
I’m currently cataloging a nice run of English opera imprints from the 18th century, many published by John Walsh. This particular score, William Boyce’s The Chaplet, seemed to be another in much the same vein. These Walsh scores are engraved, and provide a wide variety of printing variations, both expected, and … unexpected. Now granted,…
What’s New: Acquisitions from the Collection of Charlotte and Arthur Vershbow
In the second half of the twentieth century Charlotte and Arthur Vershbow of Boston formed a notable private rare book collection. They were close friends of Philip Hofer, founding curator of Houghton Library’s Department of Printing and Graphic Arts, and their collecting was deeply influenced by Hofer’s collection and attitude toward collecting. After the deaths…
New on OASIS in August
Finding aids for six newly cataloged collections, and preliminary box lists for two recent acquisitions, have been added to the OASIS database this month, including documents concerning Thomas Carlyle’s bequest of his library to Harvard….