This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items from the newly acquired Santo Domingo collection. As the French Revolution erupted in 1789, the bourgeoisie took up a variety of arms against the aristocracy; among them was literature. Pictured here from the Santo Domingo Collection is La Messaline françoise, a libelous account, published under…
Natural Highs!
This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items from the newly acquired Santo Domingo collection. Although much of the Santo Domingo Collection focuses on illegal and medical drugs, there is some exceptions to these books that suggest other ways of getting that feeling. Alex J. Packer, Ph.D., an educator and administrator in…
Remembering Eleanor Steber
Eleanor Steber (1914-1990) was a leading soprano at the Metropolitan Opera for over two decades. Today is her 100th birthday. Over the past weeks this blog has featured items drawn from Steber’s papers in the Harvard Theatre Collection that document two significant collaborations with American composer Samuel Barber: Vanessa (1958) and Knoxville: Summer of 1915…
From Amsterdam to New Amsterdam to Cambridge
This substantial volume of over 1200 pages was published in Amsterdam in 1693. It is a description and history of that city, replete with engraved views and plans. Though it has been at Harvard for over a century, its notable provenance, evident in a series of inscriptions, has only recently received proper cataloging. An autograph…
He leaps tall buildings in a single bound!
This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items from the newly acquired Julio Mario Santo Domingo Collection. Well eight foot walls at least! Meet Rex III, a black and tan Alsatian who was trained to detect dope and help catch criminals. Rex worked with the Flying Squad, a special crime unit with London’s…
A gift, regifted, now returned
One of my jobs as Curator is to acquire new books for the collection. This is one of the worst books I’ve ever bought. It’s a broken set, missing one of its four volumes. Some of the pages are damaged, and we already have three copies of this edition. So why did I buy it?…
The Jimi Hendrix Bibliographic Experience
This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items from the Julio Mario Santo Domingo Collection. This week’s feature is the second of two sculptural volumes: in this case, the binding itself, rather than the enclosure, defies convention. The book, a paperback French biography of Jimi Hendrix published in 1976, is unremarkable in itself. However,…
Lakota War Book Named One of “48 Books to Read”
Each year the staff of the Kenyon Review select a number of recent books as suggestions for their readers summer reading. This year among the 48 Books to Read is Castle McLaughlin’s A Lakota War Book from Little Bighorn: The Pictographic “Autobiography of Half Moon.” A Lakota War Book was selected by Natalie Shapero, Kenyon…
Eastern Magic
This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items from the newly acquired Santo Domingo collection. Indian Conjuring, a book written by L.H. Branson is a detailed instruction manual to a collection of tricks that Branson discovered while living in India. A magician himself, Branson explains tricks he has witnessed, as well as ones…
Two Recently Identified Sketches by Edwin Austin Abbey
American painter and illustrator Edwin Austin Abbey offered the following counsel to aspiring young artists: You should be sketching always… Draw the dishes on the table while you are waiting for breakfast. Draw the people in the station while you are waiting for your train… It is all part of your world. You are going…