What do we think about when we think about the history of the book in the U.S. South (for those of us prone to think about such things, that is)? It is received wisdom that the South was much less industrialized than the North in the first half of the nineteenth century. And, if print [...]
It’s a good news / bad news situation. For those of you who were not going to be able to attend Ezra Greenspan’s lecture tonight, the good news is his talk on “Researching and Writing African American Biography: The Life of William Wells Brown” has been postponed to Thursday, April 22. And for those who [...]
In the cold of a New England winter, it is easy to feel sorry for one’s self as the grey clouds of January barely dissipate in the low light of February’s early gloam. Some believe that the best way to tackle winter is to embrace it, and so the Graphic Arts department offers for your [...]
Today’s university may be in need of a revolution of its own, what with its failure to create true interdisciplinary conversation and its isolation from the wider public. The late eighteenth-century college did not exist in such isolation from the people, though few colleges became hotbeds of revolutionary activity during the war like Queen’s College (now Rutgers University). [...]
In my last post (“The Acquisitions Table: Matters Bibliopegistical“) I promised a curious story of synchronicity. Readers may recall Curator of Graphic Arts’ Lauren Hewes’s January 27 entry “Slate, before the hype” about writing slates in the AAS collections. (If you didn’t read it, go ahead and do so now. I’ll be here when you [...]
Thursday, February 25 – 7:30 p.m. at the American Antiquarian Society
Researching and Writing African American Biography: The Life of William Wells Brown
by Ezra Greenspan
William Wells Brown: A Reader Prof. Greenspan’s illustrated talk combines two stories: a narrative of the life of the most prolific and pioneering African American writer of the nineteenth century, and an account of a biographer’s journey to present that life to a twenty-first-century public.
Dogs. Some people love them, others hate them. Regardless, there is just no getting around the fact that the lives of humans and dogs have long been intertwined. Depictions of dogs were painted on cave walls by early man and just last week images of “First Dog” Bo (the Obama’s Portuguese water dog) playing in [...]
In 2010, the Graphic Arts department will be evaluating and re-housing its collection of nineteenth-century valentines. We have over 3,000 of these lacy, be-flowered paper objects and they are being sorted to provide better access for readers. Due to the high number and complexity of each object (some have moving parts, accompanying envelopes, etc., while [...]
Henry Box Brown (b. 1816) escaped lifelong slavery in Virginia by shipping himself in a box (with the help of white and African-American abolitionists) to Philadelphia in 1849. One of the few primary sources detailing his breathtaking escape to freedom is the children’s book Cousin Ann’s Stories for Children. Written in 1849 by Quaker abolitionist [...]
Just in time for your winter viewing pleasure (who needs football?), the Graphic Arts team is pleased to announce that an inventory of the European Political Print Collection is now on-line and is fully illustrated. Have a look: http://www.americanantiquarian.org/Inventories/Europeanprints/ This is the latest work by our Graphic Arts Assistant Jaclyn Penny, who inventoried, described, re-foldered, [...]
We have two more items this week. Both have to do with book binding, one as a subject, one as an exemplar. Bradford, John. The poetical vagaries of a Knight of the Folding-Stick, of Paste Castle: to which is annexed, The history of the garret, &c. Gotham [i.e. Newark, NJ?]: Printed for the author, 1815. [...]
The American Antiquarian Society is almost 200 years old. I guess that’s not entirely shocking, given that “Antiquarian” is in our name, but sometimes it’s easy to forget that when we were founded there were no functional steam-locomotives, no sewing machines, no modern matches. Napoleon was still fighting his way across Europe. Even “The Star-Spangled [...]
Schoolmarm, 1870
