Tag: 20th century

Front facade of Houghton Library

Before there was Botox

This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items from the newly acquired Julio Mario Santo Domingo Collection.   Before botox, plastic surgery, and aestheticians,  L’horreur!, women were forced to combat aging and maintain beauty the old fashioned way- with tips and remedies from publications such as Comment se guérir?  This French publication by the mysterious Dr….

Burroughs in pulp

This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items from the Julio Mario Santo Domingo collection. William S. Burroughs (1914-1997) looms large among countercultural figures of 20th-century literature. The seminal Naked lunch is a famous source of controversy – it was banned in Boston in 1962, and ultimately redeemed in a 1966 obscenity trial before…

The Jimi Hendrix Bibliographic Experience

This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items from the Julio Mario Santo Domingo Collection.   This week’s feature is the second of two sculptural volumes: in this case, the binding itself, rather than the enclosure, defies convention. The book, a paperback French biography of Jimi Hendrix published in 1976, is unremarkable in itself. However,…

Cork, resin, and rope

This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items from the Julio Mario Santo Domingo Collection.   In the course of these posts on the Santo Domingo Collection, numerous fine, extravagant, and perhaps even ostentatious bindings and enclosures have been showcased. This week, we bring you the first of two books that extend past the codex…

The works of Timothy Leary

This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items from the Julio Mario Santo Domingo Collection.   Cataloging work is now underway on the complete bibliography of author, psychologist, countercultural guru, and erstwhile Harvard lecturer Timothy Leary. The Leary volumes in the Santo Domingo Collection were previously the collection of Michael Horowitz, Leary’s associate and bibliographer….

Unmodified sexuality

This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items from the Julio Mario Santo Domingo Collection. We return to the occult in this week’s feature from the Santo Domingo Collection. Today’s author is Austin Osman Spare, an English artist, writer, and occultist active in the first half of the twentieth century. While Spare’s finely-wrought…

L’Incal

This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items from the newly acquired Santo Domingo collection. Julio Santo Domingo collected books across many forms; among them is the graphic novel. Pictured here is one of the great collaborations in French comics: L’Incal, written by Alejandro Jodorowsky, the Chilean-born French filmmaker, actor, and author, and…

La Danse Macabre

This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items from the Julio Mario Santo Domingo collection. Eros, it should now be obvious, is intrinsic to the Santo Domingo Collection; it follows that Thanatos can’t be far behind. This lavish volume by Éditions Kra is entitled La Danse Macabre, and consists of twenty images by…