Just over a year ago, we launched Isaiah Thomas Broadside Ballads: Verses in Vogue with the Vulgar. With over 800 images and 300 mini-essays, this site offers a unique and comprehensive view of the broadsides that Isaiah Thomas (1749-1831) collected in early nineteenth-century Boston. Each broadside includes a brief explanation of its content by Kate Van Winkle ...
“Fenway is the essence of baseball.” - Tom Seaver “I see great things in baseball.” - Walt Whitman It is April and once again it is a fresh, new season of baseball. The sports pages are full of box scores and statistics. Bars are filled with people arguing over batting orders and when pitchers should have been ...
Brooks, Noah. Abraham Lincoln: The Nation’s Leader in the Great Struggle through Which Was Maintained the Existence of the United States. Washington, D.C.: National Tribune, [1909, copyright 1888]. This is marginalia at its finest. Found in a remarkable collection of twenty-seven books published between 1859 and 1916, the marginalia displayed here recalls the moment when an ...
There’s no shortage of celebrations here in Massachusetts for today’s holiday, even if it is a holiday that almost nobody from any other state (with the exception of Maine and Wisconsin) has ever heard of. But for a native of Massachusetts who likes history, Patriots’ Day is about as good as it gets. After all, ...
The Pike and Wright Collection, donated by Susan Pike Corcoran, has brought to AAS more than the typical materials of photographs, diaries, books, and letters. Along with the genealogical material, a collection of medical instruments used by Dr. Nathan Staples Pike (1819-1857) is now housed within the Graphic Arts Department. You might remember seeing Dr. ...
What do a wolverine, sunshine, runaway sailors, weaving, and baseball have in common? These are the titles or subjects of items available at our ninth annual Adopt-a-Book program! Once again our intrepid curators have put together a group of items acquired over the past year or so and put them up for “adoption.” Supporters of ...
Over the last couple years, the “MarbledMonday” hashtag has taken off on the AAS Instagram feed, becoming one of our most popular regular features (competing with other favorites like “Caturday” and “Frankenbooks”). Every Monday, we show off a striking example of what are the most colorful features on historical book bindings: their marbled papers, edges, ...
