Two recent acquisitions in the Early Modern Books and Manuscripts department have plenty of colorful adventures, both literally and metaphorically. The first is a card game (call number pFB7.L5633.G800g) based on the classic picaresque novel L’Histoire de Gil Blas de Santillane by Alain Rene Le Sage, first published in 1715. Houghton already holds a set [...]
On Wednesday April 10th, Nick Wilding, Assistant Professor in Early Modern History at Georgia State University, will give the 97th George Parker Winship Lecture. “Forging the Moon: or, How to Spot a Fake Galileo” will discuss a copy of Galileo’s landmark Sidereus Nuncius, claimed to hold Galileo’s hand-drawn images of the moon observed through a [...]
In 1626, Nicholas Ferrar and his extended family withdrew from London to the village of Little Gidding, where they lived in secluded religious devotion. As part of their practices, the women of the family created a harmony of the Gospels, literally cutting and pasting the four texts to produce a single narrative. King Charles I, [...]
The Liberty Fund is following a plan first devised by Thomas Hollis over 200 years ago and making available “once again a selection of titles originally distributed to the colonies by one of the most remarkable philanthropists and supporters of American independence, the eighteenth-century Englishman Thomas Hollis.” Hollis (1720-1774) distributed books and pamphlets, to Harvard [...]
As the Curator of the Hyde Collection, I’m very pleased that the distinguished antiquarian bookseller Arthur Freeman has shared with us an exciting discovery about the significance of an item in the collection. The Shakespeare forgeries of William Henry Ireland have long intrigued scholars and captured the public imagination. But Ireland’s practice later in life [...]
The recipient of this 1601 Galileo letter is Giovanni Battista Strozzi, a member of a wealthy and powerful Florentine family, whose status is reflected in the flattery Galileo lavishes on a poem Strozzi has sent him. The very beautiful poem and the most pleasing letter from you, Sir, have given me double contentment, the latter [...]
We are preparing for two George Parker Winship lectures this semester, one by Robert De Maria (25 October 2012) and the other by Roger Stoddard (11 October 2012). These will be the 95th and 96th lectures that were inaugurated under the fund established by the John Barnard Associates. Stoddard’s topic is “How I Found the [...]
Exactly 236 years ago today, President of the Continental Congress John Hancock sent one of the just-printed copies of the Declaration of Independence to General Artemas Ward, commander of the Continental Army troops in Boston. Hancock’s letter came to Houghton as part of John Hubbard Collection of signers of the Declaration of Independence, previously mentioned [...]
This Friday, Christie’s auction house in New York is selling a blockbuster item–George Washington’s annotated copy of the Constitution. Houghton holds a book from Washington’s library that, while not so iconic a work, gives quite a bit more insight into Washington’s actions as President.
The excitement of this week’s transit of Venus was somewhat dampened in Boston by cloudy skies and rain. To make up for this, we offer a bit of astronomical history from the time of the first widely viewed transits of Venus in the 18th century. Though we’ll never see it transiting the sun, William Herschel’s [...]
