This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items from the newly acquired Julio Mario Santo Domingo Collection. This collection includes a lot of erotica, particularly from the 19th-century, but it also includes a lot of sex humor books including this one titled How to do sex properly by Bruce Aiken, Bridgid Herridge and Colin Rowe….
Emily Dickinson Black Cake Video Wins Award
At the first film festival sponsored by the Association of Research Libraries, Harvard Library took first place for Best Collections-Focused Film for Houghton Library’s video on baking Emily Dickinson’s original black cake. Heather Cole, Emilie Hardman, and Emily Walhout created the video as a way to document their attempt to authentically recreate Dickinson’s cake recipe for her 185th birthday celebration…
Search & Destroy
This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items recently cataloged from the Julio Mario Santo Domingo Collection. Launched in 1977, Search & Destroy was the first punk rock and new wave publication to emerge in San Francisco. Created by V. Vale, who began publishing the zine through his employer, City Lights Bookstore, Search…
Epithalamion for Bianca Maria Sforza
Houghton Library recently acquired a rare copy of one of the first independently printed wedding orations. Ad Serenissimum Maximilianum inuictissimu[m] Romanoru[m] rege[m]: in auspicatissimis eius & Augustæ Blanche mariæ nuptiis: Epithalamion. [Milan, Leonardus Pachel after 8 April 1494]. (ISTC im00401800) was written by Giasone del Maino (1435-1519) and delivered in praise of the couple at…
Smokerama
This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items from the newly acquired Julio Mario Santo Domingo Collection. If you are looking for “classic tobacco accoutrements” this volume of Smokerama is just the ticket! In today’s anti-smoking climate it may seem hard to imagine that smoking was once considered a sophisticated and glamorous habit and accessories for…
A library for a stage, students to act
Last night, within the girdle of Houghton’s walls, Harvard’s own Hyperion Shakespeare Company worked on our imaginary forces, staging five scenes from Shakespeare on four unworthy scaffolds throughout the library. Visitors jumped o’er time, from room to room, to behold the swelling scene! Thank you Hyperion!…
Sherlock shoots up, in shorthand
This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items recently cataloged from the Julio Mario Santo Domingo Collection. Among the works of Arthur Conan Doyle, the Fitz Hugh Ludlow Memorial Library took a particular collecting interest in his second Sherlock Holmes novel, The sign of the four. The novel’s opening lines, here quoted from the…
Print, Manuscript and the Education of Women in Renaissance Italy
Houghton Library has recently acquired a copy of an important book in the history of the education of women, Annibale Guasco’s Ragionamento. Annibale Guasco (1540-1619) composed this educational treatise for his eleven-year-old daughter, Lavinia, as she entered the service of the Duchess of Savoy. Annibale recorded her humanist education at home and under his direction…
“The Physical Impossibilities of Death in the Mind of Someone Living”
This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items recently cataloged from the Julio Mario Santo Domingo Collection. Damien Hirst is a world-renowned (and criticized) English artist, entrepreneur, and art collector, said to be the wealthiest living artist from the United Kingdom. In his I Want to Spend the Rest of My Life Everywhere,…
More lobster sheet music
No quadrilles, but more lobster sheet music. Here are two pieces for piano, once again featuring ladies in large hats (see previous post) Published in Cleveland … lobsters are an exotic menu item in Cleveland perhaps?…