Posted in Uncategorized on Aug 19th, 2009 No Comments »
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 [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on Jul 17th, 2009 No Comments »
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 [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on Aug 25th, 2008 No Comments »
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 [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on Aug 5th, 2008 No Comments »
Among our recent new acquisitions is a manuscript collection of Anne McCaffrey’s 1977 novel Dragonsinger, the second book in her Harper Hall trilogy and a part of the Dragonriders of Pern series.
McCaffrey, a Radcliffe alum originally from Cambridge, has authored over 90 works. This collection follows the creation of the novel, originally titled “The Harper [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on May 7th, 2008 1 Comment »
“The Wind begun to rock the Grass,” by Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) is one of the most textually interesting in her corpus. She revised it over a period of nearly twenty years, and five versions survive: four in autograph, and one transcript of a lost autograph original. That “lost” original has now been recovered, and has [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on Mar 13th, 2008 1 Comment »
In 1910, Horace de Vere Cole and five friends, including Virginia Stephen (who would marry Leonard Woolf in 1912) and her brother Adrian Stephen (a classmate of Cole’s), coordinated and successfully carried out an elaborate hoax against the Royal Navy.
Cole began by sending a telegram to the HMS Dreadnought, moored in Dorset, telling the [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on Mar 12th, 2008 1 Comment »
For our inaugural post, may we present:
Published in the mid-1820s, Musée des Dames et des Demoiselles includes six small books covered in lavender paper and packed together in a blue and gilt paper gift box. Each book covers a different area of science appropriate for delicate demoiselles: fruit, flowers, minerals, butterflies, insects, and birds. Along [...]