We don’t have the recipes that the Pilgrims used for the first Thanksgiving feast, but we can gain some insight about the food preparation practices of the Boston colonists of 150 years later, thanks to the survival of cookbooks like Susannah Carter’s The Frugal Housewife, or Complete Woman Cook (1772), just the second cookbook printed…
Father of criminology
This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items recently cataloged from the Julio Mario Santo Domingo Collection. Cesare Lombroso was an Italian physician and criminologist who founded the Italian School of Positivist Criminology. Lombroso’s theory of anthropological criminology was a mix of the concepts of Social Darwinism, physiognomy, psychiatry, and degeneration theory. Essentially…
Printers on Ice
The Thames’ frost fairs of the 17th, 18th, and early 19th centuries are well-documented (as well as featured in two Dr. Who episodes). They occurred during Britain’s Little Ice Age, when winters were cold enough to freeze over parts of the Thames. During them, when the ice was thick enough and lasted long enough, Londoners…
Student life, 1864 Austrian edition
As a cataloger in a university library, naturally student life is of particular interest. So when I ran across Johann Strauss Jr.’s waltz Studentenlust (Students’ Joy), the cover illustration delighted me. The guy in the center is inked slightly darker, and clearly meant to be the focus: but what of his joys? A pipe, a…
Jesus Junk
This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items recently cataloged from the Julio Mario Santo Domingo Collection. The Daily Planet publication appears to be somewhat of a mystery. It is clearly a reference to the famed Daily Planet newspaper from the Superman franchise, but I couldn’t find any further information about the title. …
Demons, dames, and devices: DAMES
For the second in our series on Big Data (Demons are here) in John Ward’s collection of Strauss family dance music (surely a present-day Strauss would even now be writing a Data-Crunching Waltz!) we turn to images of women. The accomplished young lady beguiling long family evenings at her keyboard, or livening up a gathering…
Now they’ll sleep
This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items recently cataloged from the Julio Mario Santo Domingo Collection. The influence of drugs on literary output is in evidence throughout the Santo Domingo Collection, but the volume pictured here wears that influence with unusual prominence: pictured on the publisher’s book-cloth binding is a cluster of opium…
Witches Sabbath
This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items recently cataloged from the Julio Mario Santo Domingo Collection. Tableau de l’insonstances des mauuais anges et demons was published in 1612 and shines a light on the European witch trials of the 16th and 17th-centuries. It was written by Pierre De Lancre, a magistrate, who…
New on OASIS in November
The finding aid for one newly cataloged collection, and preliminary box lists for two recent acquisitions, were added to the OASIS database this month. For more on Houghton’s acquisition of the Maurice Blanchot papers, see here. Processed by Irina Klyagin: Diaghilev, Serge, 1872-1929, recipient. Letters to Serge Diaghilev from various correspondents, 1916-1929 (MS Thr 1140)…
Classical Tradition V
A group of four pen, ink and wash drawings by the English artist William Henry Brooke (1772-1860) was recently acquired from the English antiquarian bookseller, Christopher Edwards. Brooke is primarily known as a portrait painter, book illustrator and satirical draftsman. He was recording the results of an archaeological dig at Brome Hall, Eye, Suffolk, the…