Here in Central Massachusetts in July, readers and staff at AAS are experiencing our third heat wave of the summer. Mind you, heat waves here in New England cannot compete with those that build in the American Southwest, Texas, or the Deep South, but we suffer all the same. To counter the heat, I decided ...
Van Etten Bros., Manufacturers, Importers and Jobbers of Novelties, Notions, Books, Photographs, Chromos, Stereoscopic Views, and a Full Line of Goods Adapted Especially to the Wants of Canvassing Agents. Chicago: Birnery Hand &Co’s Steam Printing House, 1876. The Van Etten Bros. catalog is like a nineteenth-century SkyMall catalog, only instead of reading it while on ...
The American Antiquarian Society is delighted to welcome Molly O’Hagan Hardy as our new Digital Humanities Curator. Molly will join AAS in September as a 2013 American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) Public Fellow, and will be working to promote digital humanities scholarship using the Society’s collections, increase access to the Society's digitized collection materials, ...
Sartain, Samuel after Christian Schussele. Clear the Track! Philadelphia: Samuel Sartain, for the Art Union of Philadelphia, 1854. Founded in 1844, the Art Union of Philadelphia issued six engravings to its subscribing members between 1847 and 1854 in an attempt to promote and disseminate American art in the region. With generous support from the Richard ...
This past year the American Antiquarian Society has been hard at work proving the old adage that a picture is worth a thousand words, especially when it comes to cartoons. AAS holds a comprehensive collection of political cartoons produced in the United States between 1764 and 1876. The separately published American cartoon collection holds ...
New-York Clipper (New York, NY). Apr. 13, 1863 – Apr. 8, 1865. At a recent book fair, AAS was offered two bound volumes of this extremely rare sporting and entertainment periodical. It began in 1853 as a periodical covering sporting events. By the time of the Civil War the New-York Clipper included coverage of the theatrical ...
At the July 4, 1818, anniversary of its founding the New York Typographical Society celebrated with one of its typical ceremonies. Since its establishment in 1809, the Society had commemorated its anniversary every year with an evening of toasts and odes dedicated to the art of printing. Those in attendance at ...
AAS has a strong collection of American periodicals dating back to the 1740s, which often focused on a particular subject or advocacy. Scattered throughout the stacks are serials focusing on topics such as religion, agriculture, temperance, crafts, abolitionism, vegetarianism, reform, anti-masonry, art, or women. There is one periodical that is unlike any other in the collection, ...
Fitch's Geography for Beginners, [1850-1858]. This handwritten textbook of geography is something of a mystery. Heavily illustrated with original drawings and images clipped from publications, the text is divided into lessons with topics such as “About Travelling,” “About the Surface of the Earth,” “About Animals,” and “About Trees and Plants.” The title, Fitch’s Geography… suggests that ...
Recently my high-school-aged daughter was working on a final paper for her English class. She was writing about Edgar Allan Poe, comparing the vault setting of “The Cask of Amontillado" with the quiet library used in the poem “The Raven.” She asked me to proofread her paper and to check her bibliography (I was a ...
Buell, Jonathan S.The Cider Makers’ Manual:a Practical Hand-Book, Which Embodies Treatises on the Apple; Construction of Cider Mills, Cider-Presses, Seed-Washers, and Cider Mill Machinery in General; Cider Making; Fermentation; Improved Processes in Refining Cider, and its Conversion into Wine & Champagne. Revised edition with additions.Buffalo:Published by Haas, Nauert& Co., 1874. Perhaps the best of 19th-century American ...
On Saturday, June 22, AAS will hold an interactive workshop for educators entitled Mining for Minerals: The Pull of the West that explores the search for gold and silver in the west and the impact that it had on immigration, economic development, the environment, Native Americans and social interactions. Led by Middlebury College professor Kathyrn ...
How can images help make the past more accessible to students? If you are an educator looking for ways to enrich your classroom teaching, consider an upcoming workshop at the American Antiquarian Society—Picture Perfect: Nineteenth-Century Women in Words and Images. The Center for Historic American visual Culture (CHAViC) at AAS is sponsoring a one-day interdisciplinary ...
Brown, Frances. Sketches from Nature, for My Juvenile Friends.Cleveland: Mrs. H.F.M. Brown; Cincinnati: Longley Brothers; Boston: Bela Marsh, 1858. This is a remarkable collection of short stories that were clearly the product of the reformist press that flourished in Boston, Cincinnati, and Cleveland shortly before the Civil War. Although the wood-engraved illustrations look quite conventional--here is ...
On a sunny Sunday morning in May, Tufts University held its 2012 commencement exercises. The event was of particular significance to us at AAS because among the recipients of honorary degrees was AAS’s own Philip J. Lampi, who has spent more than four decades compiling early electoral data. Mostly on his own time and at ...
