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…
Early Eighteenth-Century French Music Miscellanies
Early eighteenth-century manuscript miscellanies of French music offer a wealth of insight into contemporary public and private musical tastes and activities. Two such miscellanies in the John Milton and Ruth Neils Ward Collection reveal especially fascinating histories of compilation practices and use….
Indian subcontinent in 60 engravings or less…
This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items from the newly acquired Julio Mario Santo Domingo Collection. Frans Balthazar Solvyns was born in Antwerp in 1760 and for the early part of his career was a marine painter capturing the likenesses of ships, ports, and harbor views on canvas. He departed for Calcutta…
A Spiritual Guide
This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items from the newly acquired Santo Domingo collection. Charles Berner offers his road to spiritual freedom in the short, pamphlet-like book, Enlightenment. Illustrated by Peter Max, this book has detailed instructions, including a sample schedule for a day of Enlightenment Intensive at the Institute of Ability,…
The Beats Go On
This post is part of an ongoing series featuring material from the Julio Mario Santo Domingo Collection. Published in 1952, John Clellon Holmes’s lightly-fictionalized autobiographical novel Go was the first literary depiction of the Beat generation – Kerouac’s On the Road was extant, but only in typescript. On the Road was among the works that would later eclipse…
Russian prints from the Nathalie Ehrenbourg-Mannati collection
One hundred Russian lubok prints, or lubki, acquired by Houghton in 1961 from the collection of Nathalie Ehrenbourg-Mannati, were recently cataloged as part of our hidden collections cataloging initiative….
Let’s take a bite out of crime!
This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items from the newly acquired Julio Mario Santo Domingo Collection. The collection has a large number of French translations of books that deal with crime and criminals in the United States. Chicago : ville du crime or Rattling the cup on Chicago crime was written by Edward…
The Bon Ton Skillig List
Here is a recently cataloged “Skellig list” broadside from the city of Cork, Ireland. A Skellig (or Skillig) list is a poem pairing up local bachelors and unmarried women, giving the subjects false names; but they were easily identifiable to local residents, given their age and physical descriptions (flattering or insulting), how long they have…
Exploring Advertising
This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items from the newly acquired Santo Domingo collection. Although the marketing and branding world was very different in 2002, Jean Jacques Evrard and Brice Auckenthaler still present interesting and relevant insight in their book What If? Insights into brand trends and the birth of new target…