Pick of the Week, Sept. 18: Learning to read Tamil numbers

Can you read the text on this page? Neither can I!  But it’s one of many foreign-language Bibles in our Special Collections that I’ve had to catalog.  Back in the early 19th century, the British Foreign and Bible Society was hard at work on its goal of translating the Bible into as many foreign languages … Read more

Pick of the week, January 9: Correcting Waterloo history

  Just because it’s in a history book doesn’t mean it’s correct.  In this detailed study of the Battle of Waterloo from 1815 (where Wellington soundly defeated Napoleon), someone has written tons of annotations (comments in the margins), correcting the author. Given what he’s written, it sounds like the person writing the comments was right … Read more

Pick of the week, Aug. 23: The Atomic Age Opens

How did people really feel about nuclear weapons back in 1945, just after the first bombs had been dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki?  Here’s one way to find out: The Atomic Age Opens (New York: Pocket Books, Inc., 1945) gives a view into the public mindset in 1945, and some of the questions that were … Read more

Pick of the week, Aug. 16: Sea weeds from Bermuda

Who knew that you could find actual plant specimens in Special Collections & Archives?  It’s true, we own several books of pressed plants, including this book of pressed sea vegetation from Bermuda. Bermuda 1890 was handmade out of blue-green paper, with hand-painted oceanfront scenes on the front and back covers.  Inside, 45 different specimens of … Read more

Pick of the week, August 2: Poetry and woodcuts

Here’s one of our newly-cataloged artists’ books: Everyone Sang, by Siegfried Sassoon, with woodcuts by Terry Schupbach-Gordon (Tobaccoville, N.C.: Catbird Press, 2009). Siegfried Sasson is best known as a poet of World War I, along with Robert Graves and Wilfred Owens.  He wrote this short poem called “Everyone Sings” in celebration of the end of … Read more

Pick of the week, July 26: Account of a Voyage in 1805

Here’s a newly-cataloged book in our collection: Account of a voyage to the western coast of Africa, performed by His Majesty’s sloop Favourite, in the 1805, being a journal of the events which happened to that vessel… By F. B. Spilsbury (London: R. Phillips, 1807).  Several of the engravings in the book show that the … Read more

Pick of the week, June 7: The Oasis of Jupiter Ammon

Wondering what to do before you graduate?  Here’s what one student did, back in 1929…  Paul S. McElroy graduated from Wesleyan in 1930, but the year before that, he spent time in Egypt, teaching English at the American University at Cairo.  While there, he and some of the faculty members of the American University took … Read more

Pick of the week, May 17: HERetic, an artist’s book

This week, we just added a new artist’s book to our collection: HERetic: Joan of Arc, by Dorothy Simpson Krause (Marshfield Hills, Mass. : Viewpoint Editions, 2009). What’s an artist’s book, you say?  One short definition, by scholar Stephen Bury,  says that “Artists’ books are books or book-like objects over the final appearance of which … Read more

Pick of the week, April 12: Mrs. Booth’s promptbook

What do you think of when you see the name “Booth” on the cover of a 19th-century U.S. play?  Does the name “John Wilkes Booth” come to mind, perhaps?  I’ve been cataloging just such an item, a promptbook of the 1859 play The Octaroon. Right at the top of the cover, handwritten in ink, is … Read more

Pick of the week, Jan. 11: Broadsides from the Revoutionary War

What is a broadside?  It’s another term for a poster, but often with more words than pictures on it.  I’ve been cataloging a small stack of broadsides printed during and after the American Revolutionary War.  Here are two proclamations printed as broadsides — one from the governor of Connecticut, Jonathan Trumbull, in 1777, and a … Read more