In the intervening week or so since my post on this mysterious image appeared on the AAS blog, I contacted Alexander Anderson scholar and AAS member Jane Pomeroy. She graciously sent me this scanned copy of the full image found in her copy of the Mahlon Day 1830 edition of Divine Songs. According to Jane, [...]
No rose without a thorn. New York: Nathaniel Currier, [1838-1856] Shown with “My Master’s Wife” When he started his business on Nassau Street in New York City, Nathaniel Currier offered for sale lithographs of news events, historic images, local views, and pretty women. He also occasionally produced narrative genre scenes such as this curious depiction [...]
Pictures from the Civil War in North America – Bilder aus dem Bugerkriege in Nordamerica – Des tableaux de la guerre-civile en Amerique du Nord. Nuremberg: G.W. Faber, [c. 1864] Puzzle blocks in box, with six hand-colored lithographs showing the solutions. This German game was produced for the European and American markets and includes six [...]
Lilly, Wait, Colman & Holden Printers, Publishers, Booksellers & Stationers. Handbill with illustration by David Claypool Johnston. Boston: Pendleton, 1833. This small handbill advertising a new shop for a Boston book publisher arrived as part of a generous gift of David Claypool Johnston material from AAS member David Tatham. After checking the Society’s Johnston family [...]
As the cataloger for AAS’s Prints in the Parlor project, I’ve been working with gift books and annuals now for fifteen months. In that time, I’ve found few images that represent scenes of Christmas. This is surprising because many of the annuals were given as Christmas gifts and have titles that you would think have [...]
This haunting lithograph depicting Hans Christian Andersen’s Little Match-Girl is taken from the rare collection of Hans Andersen’s stories, Good Wishes for the Children, interpreted by A.A.B. and S.G.P., published by the famed Riverside Press in 1873. AAS acquired its copy from the illustrious bookman Benjamin Tighe in 1967, and up until now, the identity [...]
As the calendar turns to November, our thoughts naturally turn to baseball… What!? Really? Yes, this year it took until November first to crown a World Series champion. Each year it seems, the games are on later and later (in the day and in the year). Can the casual fan sustain his interest over the [...]
As readers of Past is Present are already aware, the Society’s Graphic Arts department is currently immersed in cataloging illustrations in our collection of gift books for the Prints in the Parlor project. Because the season of ghosts and goblins is now upon us as we near the end of October, we have been making [...]
Scrapbooking is quite the popular hobby today, but it’s hardly a new idea. People have been compiling images, memorabilia, and the written word since these things existed. While exploring yet another of the American Antiquarian Society’s hidden gems, I found we have a wonderfully rich scrapbook collection. The collection of scrapbooks at AAS is currently [...]
As it says on the Statue of Liberty: “Give me your tired…your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…” and the newly-found abandoned line “…your unwanted editions, pages uncut, spines unopened, loathed by your authors and deemed unworthy cultural capital by your countrymen…” Okay, maybe that isn’t exactly what it says. Perhaps the line’s lack of [...]
With Election Day fast approaching, it seemed like a good time to have a look at the Society’s holdings of American election ballots. This is a collection of around 700 mostly New England imprints, dating from about 1815 to the 1880s. Most of the ballots are small in size and are arranged by political party, [...]
This image above of a woman reading in a busy interior, surrounded by household chaos appears in two gift books in the Society’s large collection, one from 1849 and one from 1853. The main figure sits completely engrossed in her book while the baby cries and a cat and a dog steal food. A tradesman [...]
The following conundrum for Past is Present readers comes from AAS reader Mary Fissell. I’m writing a book about Aristotle’s Masterpiece, and have just spent a couple of very productive and happy weeks working with the AAS’s collection of 50+ editions. This book, neither by Aristotle, nor a masterpiece, is one of the longest-running popular [...]
A Place of Reading. That phrase defines Antiquarian Hall. Reading is an everyday occupation for those of us in Antiquarian Hall whether staff or, yes, readers. But it is also part of the title for the newest online exhibition posted on the AAS website. How did this one come to pass? It started over twenty [...]
NPR had a piece this morning on an exhibit that just opened at the Smithsonian called Telling Stories: Norman Rockwell from the Collections of George Lucas and Steven Spielberg. If you are in the D.C. area, the exhibit is running until January. It sounds like they are making some interesting connections between the American movie-makers [...]
In a New York Times Book Review article last month, Jennifer Schuessler quoted Bob Brown, an early proponent of electronic reading devices. In his prescient manifesto, “The Readies,” Brown declared: “The written word hasn’t kept up with the age…. Writing has been bottled up in books since the start.” Brown called for no less than [...]
This past April, the state of Massachusetts marked the 235th anniversary of the famous ride of Paul Revere and the start of the American Revolution at the Battles of Lexington & Concord. As you might expect, AAS takes Patriot’s Day (April 19th) seriously. Like most Massachusetts residents, we have the day off (it is a [...]
Next year marks the 150th anniversary of the start of the American Civil War. Many institutions are planning exhibitions, activities, and publications around the events which tore the United States apart between 1861 and 1865. Some organizations have already contacted AAS regarding the possibility of borrowing or reproducing material from our collections. The uptick in [...]
When I first told people I’d decided to nurse my twins I was asked jokingly, “So you’re going to hire a wet nurse?” followed by “too bad they’re not around anymore.” Of course they are, I thought – just ask Salma Hayek. For awhile I didn’t think about nursing history, until I recently saw in [...]
Recently, the American Antiquarian Society digitized a new finding aid to help scholars access the Society’s Group Photograph collection (http://www.americanantiquarian.org/groupphotos.htm). Usually, we like these finding aides to be as complete as possible, with detailed entries and scans — you know, the whole works, like we have done for our collections of daguerreotypes, ambrotypes and tintypes. [...]
Schoolmarm, 1870
