This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items from the newly acquired Julio Mario Santo Domingo Collection. Léo Taxil was actually the pen name for Gabriel-Antoine Jogand-Pagès, a man born in Marseille who was educated by Jesuits in the mid 19th-century. He became extremely disillusioned with the Catholic faith during his time among…
Within the Cover of a Manuscript
One joy of working with pre-modern manuscripts comes from the process of discovery. These can be great—as the finding of a lost work—and small—an amusing marginal note left by a medieval reader. My discovery came on the first day of the four weeks I spent at the Houghton Library last summer in an unsuspecting manuscript….
Observer-ing the 60s
This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items from the newly acquired Julio Mario Santo Domingo Collection. Color supplements to established newspapers were first produced in the 1960s and are believed by many to have changed the face of newspapers. Many thought that a color magazine would cheapen the journalistic integrity of the Observer, a…
King Luckieboy Prepares for His Debut
The “King Luckieboy’s Party” graphite on tracing paper drawings came to the Weissman Preservation Center conservation lab in preparation the Walter Crane exhibition (which runs September 21st-December 19th) primarily because the drawings were at risk for damage due to the housing. The treatment, however, unexpectedly uncovered what may be evidence of the original intent of…
Early Home Entertainment: Engelbrecht’s Miniature Theatres
The Harvard Theatre Collection has recently acquired three works by Martin Engelbrecht, an eighteenth-century engraver and printer. He is perhaps best known for the series of intricate, hand-colored prints he created, designed to form theatrical scenes when viewed in peepshows. A form of entertainment very popular in Europe by the mid-18th century, peepshows could be…
Hi-Brew Beer
This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items from the newly acquired Julio Mario Santo Domingo Collection. Interested in brewing your own “special beer”? Then this book could be for you! Beer making has been going on for thousands of years and the Unknown Brewer, who is brewmaster of Hi-Brewers decided to share his…
“Shine on my love in all her ways”
This intriguing piece of vernacular art, recently acquired by Houghton, tells a tale of heartsick woe from late 18th century New England. We know little about the author beyond his initials, E.W., and that he apparently created this piece after the object of his affections turned down his proposal of marriage. This item, known as…
International man of mystery??
This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items from the newly acquired Julio Mario Santo Domingo Collection. I came across this French volume the other day and assumed it was about some sort of military hero, but as I took a closer look at the cover of the book I noticed that he was…
New on OASIS in August
Finding aids for five newly cataloged collections, as well as a preliminary box list for one new acquisition, were added to the OASIS database this month, including a collection of watercolors by Edward Lear (an example at left). Processed by Caroline Duroselle-Melish (with the assistance of Bonnie B. Salt): Edward Lear Studio Watercolors, 1848-1884 (MS…
Tracts of Zion
Cataloging was recently completed on a collection of tracts and other publications by John Ward (1781-1837), the Irish mystic who later rechristened himself Zion, and whose career as a prophet was distinguished by an idiosyncratic reading of scripture. Ward’s early life was spent as a shipwright and shoemaker, attended by relative disinterest in religion; he…