Posted in Houghton Library, Uncategorized on May 20th, 2019 2 Comments »
Houghton recently acquired a nineteenth-century bilingual manuscript of Ukrainian and Russian folk songs and verse. At first glance, the work seems unremarkable. At 370 pages, it contains over 120 poems and songs, including well-known works by Alexander Pushkin and Taras Shevchenko as well as many popular songs from the period. Certain details, however, render the […]
Posted in Houghton Library, Uncategorized on Apr 18th, 2019 2 Comments »
A magnificent gift from the Theodore Roosevelt Association (TRA) in March celebrates its 76-year-long association with Harvard University. The Roosevelt Memorial Association (now the TRA) presented its sizable library holdings—which included 12,000 books and pamphlets, 10,000 photographs, and thousands of letters, manuscripts, and other items—to Harvard University, Roosevelt’s alma mater, in 1943. This became the […]
Posted in Houghton Library on Jun 28th, 2018 1 Comment »
The archive of Greek poet and lyricist Nikos Gatsos has found a permanent home at Harvard Library. The acquisition is a key addition to the Library’s collections in Greek literature and civilization and will be made available to students and scholars around the world. Nikos Gatsos (1911-1992) had a profound influence on the post-war generation […]
Posted in Houghton Library on Dec 6th, 2016 Comments Off on Cautionary tales
This post is part of an ongoing series featuring recently cataloged items from the Julio Mario Santo Domingo Collection. As Nazi occupation expanded into France, Antonin Artaud (1896-1948), the avant-garde dramatist, actor, poet, and theorist of the Theatre of Cruelty, was committed to a mental hospital in Rodez. There he came under the care of […]
Posted in Houghton Library on Nov 22nd, 2016 Comments Off on More Blanchot!
Since the archive of French philosopher and author Maurice Blanchot arrived at Houghton Library in 2015, exploration of the papers by Harvard students and by scholars from around the world has been intense. When a number of important Blanchot manuscripts appeared on the market in April this year, there definitely was interest in adding them […]
Posted in Houghton Library on Nov 8th, 2016 Comments Off on Election day is upon us!
This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items from the Julio Mario Santo Domingo Collection. Inspired by Election Tuesday and in light of Massachusetts Ballot Question 4 I thought it might be interesting to look at a few ephemeral examples of the legalization of marijuana I recently uncovered within the collection. For those […]
Posted in Houghton Library on Nov 8th, 2016 Comments Off on Moloch speaks: why I’m voting yes on 4
This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items recently cataloged from the Julio Mario Santo Domingo Collection. Measures to legalize recreational marijuana are on five state ballots this year, including Houghton Library’s home state of Massachusetts. The Santo Domingo Collection naturally includes significant historical matter supporting the movement to legalize, but it also offers […]
Posted in Houghton Library on Apr 26th, 2016 Comments Off on Sherlock shoots up, in shorthand
This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items recently cataloged from the Julio Mario Santo Domingo Collection. Among the works of Arthur Conan Doyle, the Fitz Hugh Ludlow Memorial Library took a particular collecting interest in his second Sherlock Holmes novel, The sign of the four. The novel’s opening lines, here quoted from the […]
Posted in Houghton Library on Apr 12th, 2016 Comments Off on Xenophobia and the rise of Dr. Fu Manchu
This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items recently cataloged from the Julio Mario Santo Domingo Collection. Among recently-cataloged volumes in the Santo Domingo Collection is this small gathering of works by Sax Rohmer (1883-1959), an English novelist whose signal creation is the villainous crime lord Dr. Fu Manchu. Born Arthur Henry Ward, Rohmer […]
Posted in Houghton Library on Mar 15th, 2016 Comments Off on Carlyle’s bequest
Upon the death of the Scottish philosopher, novelist, historian, and mathematician Thomas Carlyle in 1881, a portion of his personal library was left to Harvard – the only public bequeathal in Carlyle’s will. The annual report of the President and Treasurer of Harvard College for that year quotes the relevant passage, which reads in part: […]
Posted in Houghton Library on Jan 7th, 2016 1 Comment »
This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items recently cataloged from the Julio Mario Santo Domingo Collection. This collection has been especially rich with volumes by Charles Baudelaire who though most famous as a French poet was also an art critic, essay writer, and translator of Edgar Allen Poe. La Fleurs du Mal, […]
Posted in Houghton Library on Dec 8th, 2015 Comments Off on Documenting an activist and his cause
The volume pictured here, C.K.C. – his book, chronicles the efforts of a little-known activist to establish international limitations on the opium trade. Charles Kittredge Crane (1881-1932) dedicated himself singly to this cause, which culminated in three League of Nations conventions held in Geneva: the first and second back-to-back in 1924 and 1925, and the third […]
Posted in Houghton Library on Nov 24th, 2015 1 Comment »
This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items recently cataloged from the Julio Mario Santo Domingo Collection. The arrival of the Beat Generation generated controversy, conversation, and in some cases literature; for some onlookers, though, it was mostly a source of opportunity. Hence Beatnik, which promises “an uncensored, unexpurgated exposé of the ‘Beat Generation’”, […]
Posted in Houghton Library on Nov 10th, 2015 Comments Off on Now they’ll sleep
This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items recently cataloged from the Julio Mario Santo Domingo Collection. The influence of drugs on literary output is in evidence throughout the Santo Domingo Collection, but the volume pictured here wears that influence with unusual prominence: pictured on the publisher’s book-cloth binding is a cluster of opium […]
Posted in Houghton Library on Nov 5th, 2015 Comments Off on Witches Sabbath
This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items recently cataloged from the Julio Mario Santo Domingo Collection. Tableau de l’insonstances des mauuais anges et demons was published in 1612 and shines a light on the European witch trials of the 16th and 17th-centuries. It was written by Pierre De Lancre, a magistrate, who […]
Posted in Houghton Library on Oct 27th, 2015 Comments Off on Not so good for what ails you
This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items recently cataloged from the Julio Mario Santo Domingo Collection. Patent medicines have been treated before in this space; these are specious remedies, containing any number of drugs and adulterants, that flourished in the 1800s, before the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 mandated ingredient lists and curbed […]
Posted in Houghton Library on Oct 1st, 2015 2 Comments »
Houghton Library has acquired the archive of French writer, literary theorist, and philosopher Maurice Blanchot (1907-2003) from his daughter, Cidalia Blanchot. Christie McDonald, Smith Professor of French Language and Literature at Harvard University, said, “I am thrilled by Houghton’s acquisition of this important archive. Scholars will have unprecedented access to material that will give us […]
Posted in Houghton Library on Sep 29th, 2015 Comments Off on The afterlife of a comic strip
Cataloging work continues on Harvard College Library’s recently acquired collection of over 20,000 zines. Zines are non-commercial, non-professional and small-circulation publications that their creators produce, publish and either trade or sell themselves. For access to the collection, contact the Modern Books & Manuscripts department. Charles Schulz’s Peanuts is just one example of a typically mainstream, family-friendly […]
Posted in Houghton Library on Sep 19th, 2015 Comments Off on The Sarah Orne Jewett Library project
The following is the fifth part in a series on books from the library of Sarah Orne Jewett (1849-1909) and her family. Houghton Library is home to many author’s libraries or portions of libraries—Bronson Alcott, William James, Thomas Carlyle, the Dickinson family, John Keats, and more. Houghton “inherited” a number of these author libraries from […]
Posted in Houghton Library on Sep 10th, 2015 Comments Off on Spirit of the mushroom
This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items from the newly acquired Julio Mario Santo Domingo Collection. Giorgio Samorini is an ethnobotantist and psychedelics researcher who has published a great deal on sacred plants and psychoactive compounds. This hand-produced report appears to be documentation written by Samorini along with the color photographs from visits […]
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