TRAVERS, Benjamin. A synopsis of the diseases of the eye, and their treatment.3rd ed. (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme & Brown, 1824).(Dr. Richard Travers is a direct descendant of the author.)An instructional manual for a 1901 version of Viagra and a pamphlet denouncing it as a fraud, a banned play about female sexuality and the published love letters of the playwright, and a volume on venereal disease by a surgeon who may have deliberately infected himself with gonorrhea. These are just a few of the intriguing items found in an enormous collection of rare books and ephemera on the history...
A "Read" Letter Day For Dickens
Mr. Charles Dickens's Last Reading.(George C. Leighton for The Illustrated London News, Vol.56, 1870.)Of the greatest writer of the Elizabethan age, William Shakespeare, so little is known that many doubt him to be the true author of his incomparable plays. At the other end of the biographical spectrum is the greatest writer of the Victorian age, Charles Dickens. As British writer Simon Callow put it: "Of Shakespeare, we know next to nothing; of Dickens we know next to everything." The Huntington Library in San Marino, CA. added a little more to that knowledge on January 27, 2010 when they announced...
Angels And Demons Reunited At Morgan Library
Hours of Catherine of Cleves, in LatinIlluminated by the Master of Catherine of ClevesThe Netherlands, Utrecht, ca. 1440(Images courtesy of Faksimile Verlag Luzern.) The first page of Catherine's prayer book foreshadows her troubled marriage. Her coat of arms as the Duchess of Guelder is centered beneath the Virgin Mary. Traditionally, her husband's crest would be illustrated atop her coat of arms. But Catherine defiantly places an Ox-- the symbol of The House of Cleves--above the emblem. Catherine is pictured praying from her Book of Hours at lower left. Her ancestors' coats of arms decorate the corners of the pages.It's every...
Famous Authors Drawn, Not Quartered
Martin Droeshout's 1623 Engraving Of William Shakespeare.The purpose of any portrait is to capture the essence of the subject. To somehow convey in a single image not just the outward appearance of the sitter, but his soul. But if the subject is a great writer, does that task become impossible? Poet Ben Jonson thought so, and maybe the curators at Princeton University's Firestone Library do, too.Those curators have just opened a new exhibit of 100 paintings, drawings, prints, photographs, marble sculptures, and plaster death masks, depicting literary giants. The title of the gallery show is: The Author's Portrait. But the...
Cowgirl Round-Up At Cowboy Library
Bulldogging Cowgirl Fox Hastings.In an 1851 Indiana newspaper editorial, John B.L. Soule famously advised: "Go West, young man, and grow up with the country." Apparently, young women were either better off back East, or didn't need to grow up. In any case, a lot of young women did go West, and many of them found the freedom of the frontier allowed them to escape their traditional Victorian roles as wives and mothers. Oklahoma's The Donald C. & Elizabeth M. Dickinson Research Center at The National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum has organized an exhibit that highlights the women who took...