Posted in Uncategorized on Nov 24th, 2008 No Comments »
The Library’s traditionally strong holdings of texts in English dialects, particularly dialect poetry, have been further enhanced with the acquisition of the James Stevens-Cox Collection of William Barnes of Dorset. Barnes (1801-1886) was one of those remarkable self-educated Victorian polymaths: schoolmaster, clergyman, philologist, artist, and (most importantly) poet.
Born into a farming family of seven [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on Nov 21st, 2008 No Comments »
By examining a reader’s annotations in the margins of a book, it can be possible to obtain insight into what might have influenced that reader’s own writing. We recently acquired both a copy of J.W. Mackail’s Latin Literature owned and annotated by T.S. Eliot, as well as Allen Ginsberg’s copy of T.S. Eliot’s Collected [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on Nov 7th, 2008 No Comments »
Prince Hall (c.1735-1807), known as the father of Black Freemasonry in the United States, worked as a minister, abolitionist, civil rights activist, and proponent of education for black children. Hall may have been born a slave in Barbados (however, several conflicting versions of Hall’s early life exist). He came to Boston in 1765, and quickly [...]