Melville’s marginalia is a hot topic in American literary studies, and inquiry is kept fresh in the field when annotated books from his library turn up on the market. Sometimes they do so in interesting and surprising ways. Melville’s copy of Boswell’s Life of Johnson, acquired in London in 1849, appeared on the tables of [...]
Finding aids for four newly cataloged collections, and a preliminary box list for one recent acquisition, were added to the OASIS database this month, including movie and television scripts and theatrical portraits. Processed by Ashley M. Nary: Theatrical Penny Plain and Twopence Coloured Portraits, 1812-1848 (MS Thr 933) For more on this collection, see this [...]
Finding aids for six newly cataloged collections, and a preliminary box list for one recent acquisition, were added to the OASIS database this month, including papers of Timothy Leary, theatrical ephemera, and the records of two 19th-century volunteer fire departments.
The Shakespeare authorship question, now over 160 years old, continues to generate books, conferences, lectures, debates, films, websites, and even blog posts; a lot of people continue to doubt that William Shakespeare the actor actually wrote the plays attributed to him. The controversy itself has become a worthy subject of study, interesting for its longevity, [...]
Finding aids for 8 newly cataloged collections, and a preliminary box list for one recent acquisition, have been added to the OASIS database this month, including Aubrey Beardsley illustrations, a major addition to our Johnny Green collection, and letters of Edwin Booth. Processed by Michael W. Austin: Johnny Green Additional Papers, 1880-1989 (MS [...]
Removed from Houghton’s copy of Sir William Edward Parry’s Journal of a Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific Performed in the Years 1819-20 is a clutch of letters and other papers tracing differing methods of polar exploration in the nineteenth century. First, a note from Sir George [...]
The passing of Valerie Eliot last Friday evoked sadness for the loss of a good friend to the Houghton Library, and marked the breaking of our the last living link with the life and legacy of T.S. Eliot, a poet inextricably linked to Harvard University. Mrs. Eliot’s dedication to protecting and promoting Eliot’s literary legacy [...]
On Wednesday, November 14th, at 5.30 P.M., Houghton will host a mind-altering experience: Carl Williams, head of the Counterculture Department at the venerable firm of Maggs Bros in London (By appointment, purveyors of rare books and manuscripts to Her Majesty the Queen) will talk on a topic the Queen doesn’t collect: the Counterculture. The term [...]
Finding aids for 8 newly cataloged collections, and a preliminary box list for one recent acquisition, have been added to the OASIS database this month, including sheet music relating to animals, caricatures of Gilbert & Sullivan, and William Dean Howells memorabilia. Processed by Irina Klyagin with the assistance of Andrea Cawelti: Pauline Viardot-Garcia [...]
In this week’s mail bag, a touch of levity and an epic scandal. A letter to American raconteur Alexander Woollcott from British author Marie Belloc Lowndes dated April 28, 1937, begins, “Dearest Alec, Here are two little news stories of those royal children.” I wish I’d come across this letter back in June during the [...]
