Month: January 2017

Front facade of Houghton Library

Scandale!

This post is part of an ongoing series featuring recently cataloged items from the Julio Mario Santo Domingo Collection. Originally a French lawyer, Georges Anquetil was also a journalist and publisher who was well known for unorthodox methods and anarchist leanings.  Early in his legal career he wrote under the name “Georges Evil.”  His career…

Artistry of Linocuts

This post is part of an ongoing series featuring recently cataloged items from the Julio Mario Santo Domingo Collection. This lovely artist book Geheimzinnige Personen : omtrent de flarden des levenswas was created by a Dutch artist, Margit Willems.  It loosely translates to Mysterious Persons: on the scraps of life and features 23 linocuts with text…

Climbing that career ladder

Ah, patronage.  That special arrangement, in which a composer or author contacts someone in High Places, and asks them to lend their name (and/or their money) to a publication. No less a luminary then Blackadder has struggled with its complexities. Scholars today are particularly interested in those little dedications often found at the head of…

Washington the Great, Chief of the Columbians

Alfred the Great drove the invading Danes out of England and coins from his reign dub him “King of the English” in tribute to this victory. In the centuries following his death, he gained a reputation as the monarch who did much to create not only the new nation of England, but also the mythology…

John Adams on Shakespeare, or As You Dislike It

Another year of Shakespeare has drawn to a close. This week on Broadway the curtain came down on the hit show Something Rotten! whose song “I Hate Shakespeare” offered the closest thing to a respite from the past year’s tempest of fulsome tributes. Those weary of the much ado can take heart: the next anniversary…

“Fuel for the fire of learning”: Houghton Library Opens its Doors

On this day seventy-five years ago, 3 January 1942, library staff and their families attended a private celebration to mark the opening of the new Houghton Library. As the Second World War raged in two theaters, William A. Jackson, the new Library’s first director, and Philip Hofer, the founding curator of its Department of Printing…