This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items from the newly acquired Santo Domingo collection. At the end of every year, while preparing for the new one, people are often struck with nostalgia. This feeling, not just for the past year, but of past eras, is evoked in David Seidman’s book All Gone:…
Hypnotic huckster
This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items from the newly acquired Julio Mario Santo Domingo Collection. In his book Practical lessons in hypnotism & magnetism, L.W. DeLaurence states that “Occult force” is simply personal magnetism that if well developed is able to control man, woman, child or beast at will. If a person possesses this occult force…
The town musicians of Houghton
Gervasius Redler came to Paris from Alsace in the early 19th century, and set up shop as a piano teacher. Around 1840, he began publishing dance music in the popular styles of the day, particularly quadrilles….
On the Money
This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items from the Julio Mario Santo Domingo collection. This edition of Jules Boissière’s Propos d’un intoxiqué has featured before in this space – see this post for a copy formerly owned by its illustrator, Tsuguharu Foujita. This copy, however, warrants revisiting the title. Every page of this 240-volume book…
Child’s Play
The partnership between the Argentinian publisher Constancio C. Vigil and the Spanish graphic designer Federico Ribas was an exceedingly fruitful and colorful one. Vigil was born in Uruguay in 1876 and came to dominate the field of Argentinian journalism during the first quarter of the 20th century, editing no fewer than seven highly-popular magazines. In…
The rituals of Illuminates of Thanateros
This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items from the newly acquired Santo Domingo collection. Liber Null, a book by Pete Carroll, was originally written as a sourcebook for the magical organization, Illuminates of Thanateros. It includes spells and magical exercises ranging from mind control to transmogrification. A warning at the beginning of…
New on OASIS in December
Finding aids for four newly cataloged collections have been added to the OASIS database this month, most notably the John Updike Papers, a major collection of some 300 linear feet, which has been under way since its acquisition in 2009. Photo © Martha Updike Processed by Jennifer Lyons and others: John Updike Papers, 1940-2009 (MS…
Circulating libraries
I recently had the great pleasure of assisting a Jane Austen scholar who was looking for book evidence of English circulating libraries during Austen’s lifetime. At first I thought that the assignment would be a piece of cake, since I’d run across a fair amount of 18th and 19th century French subscription library evidence in…
Urdu Punch
This post is part of an ongoing series featuring material from the Julio Mario Santo Domingo Collection. Punch, the seminal British satirical magazine, is credited with popularizing the use of ‘cartoon’ to mean a comic drawing, rather than a preliminary sketch for a painting or tapestry. During the time of the British Raj, a number of publications…
Myths of London
This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items from the newly acquired Santo Domingo collection. Although at first glance London Walkabout by Andrew Collins looks like a typical pamphlet for a tourist it actually is much more unusual. Subtitled “Your guide to discovering the myths and legends of ten mystical sties in and…