If you were a holiday shopper in the 1830s, one item on your list might well have been an annual gift book—an anthology of illustrations, poems, stories, and essays, in an affordable but decorative binding. Several examples of 19th century holiday gift books are now on exhibit in the ZSR Library Special Collections & Archives... Continue reading “A Token of My Affection: 19th Century Christmas Annuals” ›
Modern cooks have it easy. If our Thanksgiving preparations go awry, we have shelves of books to consult for advice, not to mention Google, or, as a last resort, the Butterball hotline. Preparers of the original 17th century feast would have had to rely on oral traditions and perhaps a few handwritten “receipts,” which tended... Continue reading “Modern American Cookery, by Prudence Smith (1835)” ›
You asked me to tell you about my theory of poetry. Really I haven’t got one. I like things that are difficult to write and difficult to understand; I like “redeeming the contraries” with secretive images; I like contradicting my images, saying two things at once in one word, four in two words and one... Continue reading “18 Poems, by Dylan Thomas (1934)” ›
Banned Books Week is observed each September by librarians, publishers, authors, educators, and readers to show “support of the freedom to seek and to express ideas, even those some consider unorthodox or unpopular.” By calling attention to various attempts to restrict access to books and other materials, Banned Books Week reminds readers that freedom of... Continue reading “Dialogus de Systema Cosmicum, by Galileo Galilei (1635)” ›
By the end of the 18th century, Thomas Chippendale (1718-1779) was the most famous furniture designer in England and North America. The term “Chippendale” had come to refer to a style of furniture prevalent throughout Europe and the United States. What started Thomas Chippendale on the road to this renown was the publication of a... Continue reading “The Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker’s Director (1754), by Thomas Chippendale” ›
One of the shelves in my office has a small label that reads “Problems.” On it are books that were found, in a recent inventory of ZSR’s Rare Books Collection, to have incorrect or nonexistent catalog records. One of my summer projects this year is to evaluate and create records for this small collection of... Continue reading “Sarum Breviaries (1555, 1556)” ›
Maya Angelou (1928-2014) never intended to write an autobiography. In 1968 she was active in the civil rights movement and had a busy and successful career as a poet, playwright, performer, and educator. A recent project– writing, producing, and hosting the PBS series Blacks, Blues, Black— had brought her to California, where she met Jules... Continue reading “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, by Maya Angelou (1969)” ›
In December of 1786 a young country poet from the west of Scotland traveled to Edinburgh. Robert Burns hoped to drum up support for a second edition of the collection of poems that he had recently published by subscription in Kilmarnock. On 6 December Burns wrote to a friend I have now been a week... Continue reading “Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect, by Robert Burns (1787)” ›
