The Acquisitions Table: How ’tis done

How ‘tis done; or The secret out. An exposure of the tricks and deceptions practiced by professional gamblers with cards and dice … 22nd ed. Carthage, IL: D. C. Cutler, [ca. 1869?] From a small Illinois town 10 miles east of Keokuk and the mighty Mississippi, D. C. Cutler ran a mail-order business for cheap chapbooks, ...

The Acquisitions Table: Day-Dawn

Day-Dawn. New York: American Tract Society, [ca. 1860] Devotional books containing brief Bible passages for daily reading were frequently printed in two-inch miniature format so as to easily fit in a pocket. The American Tract Society was a major 19th-century publisher of these pocket devotionals. This title is new to AAS, and features a splendid gilt ...

The Acquisitions Table: Thomas Hubbard’s Commonplace Book

Hubbard, Thomas. Commonplace book, 1722-1805. Thomas Hubbard (1702-1773) was born in Boston, the Son of Joseph and Thankfull (Brown) Hubbard. He was a successful merchant in Boston, for a time the treasurer of Harvard and also the Commissary General of the province of Massachusetts. Hubbard began to compile this commonplace book in 1722, the year following ...

The Acquistions Table: Handbill featuring illustration by David Claypool Johnston

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 archive, ...

The Acquisitions Table: Ella Cameron

Ella Cameron, or The maid, wife & widow of a day. An extraordinary revelation, being a true picture of high life in Washington … By an ex-member of Congress. Philadelphia: Barclay & Co., 1861. AAS owns nearly 80% of all pre-1877 titles listed in Lyle Wright’s bibliography of American fiction. Every quarter we add a few ...

Fanny and Nathaniel: Love in the Library

Quaker meetinghouse

Chelsea White, past AAS intern and present Simmons MLS student, has transcribed a diary from AAS's collections that will become our newest Line-a-Day blog debuting with the new year.  Here is her introduction: If you’ve enjoyed reading the A Day in the Life of a Blacksmith or the A Day in the Life of a Schoolmarm ...