Modern Books and Manuscripts

Selections from a recently-acquired group of 19th century chapbooks  (click on the images to enlarge them):

The storm at sea,*2009-246
An address to the unfortunate female,  *2009-239
A peep into a gin shop!, *2009-233
To find these and other chapbooks in Houghton’s collection, search HOLLIS for “chapbook” and refine your search to “Houghton Library” with the facets on the [...]

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The John Updike Archive, a vast collection of manuscripts, correspondence, books, photographs, artwork and other papers, has been acquired by Houghton Library. The Archive forms the definitive collection of Updike material, said Leslie Morris, Curator of Modern Books and Manuscripts at Houghton Library, and will make the library the center for studies on the author’s [...]

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We’ve just received a new addition to our collection of association copies, an 1897 edition of Benito Pérez Galdós’s realist novel, Doña Perfecta, owned and annotated by American intellectual Ezra Pound (1885-1972).
Pound probably acquired the work in 1905, and annotated the text with numerous notes and translations.  In a letter written to Iris Barry, circa [...]

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Modern has recently acquired the Report of the Proceedings in the Cause of Mary Alice Orford, versus Thomas Butler Cole, Esq. for a breach of promise of marriage…, published in 1818 following the trial on March 30th of that year.

This sensational case was, according to The Times, “the subject of general conversation throughout the country [...]

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In 1987, Oklahoma junior high school teacher and Vietnam veteran Bill McCloud wanted to begin teaching his students about the Vietnam War.  After conducting a survey to determine what Oklahoma students already knew about the war (and finding that they knew very little, and that little was taught), McCloud began writing letters to a number [...]

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Winifred Coombe Tennant (1874-1956) was a Welsh writer, politician, suffragette, and patron of the arts.  While her work to promote Welsh art, history, and culture are well known–and is extensively documented in her papers at the National Library of Wales–a group of papers bequeathed by Mrs. Coombe Tennant to the Houghton Library sheds [...]

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In celebration of the two hundredth anniversary of the birth of Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892), a new exhibition focuses on the poet’s great Arthuriad, Idylls of the King, a twelve-part cycle of poems composed and published over the course of nearly thirty years. The exhibition includes early manuscript drafts and variants, published editions, and artists’ [...]

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Maurice Blanchot (1907-2003), novelist, literary theorist, philosopher, and journalist -  though a reclusive figure in the literary world – had a profound impact on twentieth-century thinkers such as George Bataille, Emmanuel Levinas, Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze, Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, Jean-Luc Nancy, among others.  A recent acquisition by the Library, a joint purchase by Modern Books and [...]

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In 1861, President Lincoln  signed a bill making the United States Sanitary Commission into a government agency. Organized by thousands of women volunteers across the country, the commission succeeded in raising almost twenty five million dollars  during the course of the Civil War, and worked to cut the disease rate of the Union Army [...]

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At the turn of the twentieth century, Spanish publishers the Maucci brothers commissioned Mexican artist José Guadalupe Posada (1852-1913) to illustrate a new series of children’s stories on the history of Mexico, the Biblioteca del niño mexicano.  Each story was published with a colorful, and often rather gruesome, wrapper illustration depicting the contents within, and [...]

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While best known as a Romantic poet, Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) held government posts in the British government of Malta from April 1804 to September 1805.  The location was chosen in part to aid the poet’s poor health.
From April 1804 to September 1805, Coleridge served in Malta as Secretary to the Governor, Sir Alexander Ball.  [...]

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German-born Winfried Georg Sebald (1944-2001) is widely known in the German-speaking world for his visionary novels, collections of poetry, and astute literary criticism.
Sebald’s award-winning fiction includes the novels Schwindel, Gefühle (Vertigo)(1990), Die Ausgewanderten (The Emigrants) (1992),  Die Ringe des Saturn: Eine Englische Wallfahrt (The Rings of Saturn) (1995), and Austerlitz (2001), among others, focus on [...]

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The career of John Updike (1932-2009), Harvard ‘54, is well known: more than 50 books of fiction, poetry, short stories, and criticism; two Pulitzer Prizes; four National Book Awards; and a host of other honors. He is, indisputably, one of America’s pre-eminent men of letters. To honor his many contributions to his alma mater, Houghton [...]

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English naturalist Charles Darwin (1809-1882) is best remembered for his work on the evolution of plants and animals, including his theory of natural selection. 2009 marks not only the bicentennial anniversary of Darwin’s birth, but also the sesquicentennial anniversary of the publication of his most famous work, On the Origin of Species. “There is grandeur [...]

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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 [...]

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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 [...]

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Prince Hall (1738-1807), 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.  Details on Hall’s birth and early life are vague; the first record of Hall reveals he was a servant to William Hall of Boston.  Legally a [...]

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José García Villa (1908-1997) grew up in Manila, and as a teenager began to receive attention – both positive and negative – for his poetry. He moved to the United States in 1930 and enrolled at the University of New Mexico, where he founded the literary magazine, Clay, and began to write short stories. He [...]

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In 1785, Jean Jacques Audubon was born in Haiti, the illigitimate son of a French naval officer and his mistress.  Audubon immigrated to the United States at age 18 (anglicizing his name to John James Audubon), and almost immediately began to study its ornithology, hoping to illustrate the birds he observed in a more realistic [...]

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In 1846, while living at Brook Farm (the Transcendentalist utopian experiment in communal living) in West Roxbury, Massachusetts, artist Marianne Dwight (later Orvis) compiled this album of watercolor flower portraits.  Dwight (1816-1901) made a living creating lampshades and paintings, and her detailed punchwork designs can be seen on the cover of the album (click the [...]

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