This post is the first in a series on the Eleanor Steber collection to mark the centenary of her birth. A full century ago, this July, Eleanor Steber burst upon the world stage. She would later say unblushingly that she wasn’t “just born,” and that she had been “making grand entrances ever since.” Steber was…
Snowblind
This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items from the Julio Mario Santo Domingo Collection. Robert Sabbag’s semi-biographical Snowblind, first published in 1976, tells the story of Zachary Swan, a 1970s cocaine smuggler who relied on scams and ruses to move drugs past customs officials and keep himself out of harm’s way in…
Advice for Young Women
This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items from the newly acquired Santo Domingo collection. Written in 1938, Bell Wood-Comstock’s Plain Facts for Young Women on Marijuana, Narcotics, Liquor and Tobacco offers advice for those ladies whose goal is to get married and settle down with children. Wood-Comstock wrote several books on advice…
Grin and Bear It
Early printers often faced the problem of what to do with a page that only had a few lines of type on it–ideally you want a flat, even surface to print from. Oftentimes, they would use “bearer type,” type chosen more or less at random to fill out the page, perhaps lines of type from…
The Adventures of Tintin in Pop-up!
This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items from the newly acquired Julio Mario Santo Domingo Collection. “Tintin is myself. He reflects the best and brightest in me: he is my successful double…Tintin has accomplished many things on my behalf.” -Hergé Tintin who was created by Hergé, a pen name of Georges Prosper…
Ludlow’s Hasheesh Eater
This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items from the Julio Mario Santo Domingo Collection. The Fitz Hugh Ludlow Memorial Library, founded in San Francisco in 1970 and formed from the libraries of several private collectors, was a preeminent collection of drug-related literature. Upon its closure, it was acquired by Julio Santo Domingo,…
A Trip through the Spiritual
This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items from the newly acquired Santo Domingo collection. In his book High Tide, Brad Johannsen really brings Herman Hesse and Lao Tzu’s writing to life with colorful and psychedelic illustrations. The book contains the story ‘Piktor’s Metamorphasis,” a spiritual tale telling of loneliness after Piktor has…
You know where you can go
Today’s cataloging prize is a libretto of L’amore industrioso, text by Ferdinando Casorri. John M. Ward, the collector who donated this item, was particularly interested in the documentary evidence to be found in librettos….
New on OASIS in May
Finding aids for six newly cataloged collections, and a preliminary box list for one recent acquisition, have been added to the OASIS database this month, including a volume of the Virginia Woolf Monk’s House photos, letters of Samuel Beckett, and 19th century photos of Gilbert & Sullivan productions. Processed by Ashley M. Nary: Theatrical Photographs…
Playing Cards with the Devil
This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items from the newly acquired Santo Domingo collection. The term “devil’s picture books” was used by the Puritans to refer to playing cards in hopes that it would prevent people from using them. In the book by the same name, Mrs. John King Van Rensselaer gives a…