The Old Violin. Chromolithographic proof. Covington, Kentucky: Donaldson Art Sign Co., 1887. The Society has been working to build the portion of the print collection which focuses on the dissemination of fine art in the United States, adding engravings and lithographs after famous or popular American paintings. The prints were then sold to the emerging middle class ...
Trenton Cole Jones received his PhD in History from Johns Hopkins University in 2014 and is presently a Hench Post-Dissertation Fellow at the American Antiquarian Society. Cole was just awarded an NEH fellowship at the New York Historical Society for next year and has also been hired as an assistant professor of early American history at Purdue University. While on fellowship at AAS, ...
We're finally starting to see some melting and hear some birds singing after this never-ending winter, which also means we're gearing up for the start of our Spring Public Program series! This series begins with newly published books about Lincoln, set to coincide with sesquitennial of the end of the Civil War and the 150th ...
B.F. Smith Jr. after J. W. Hill. Philadelphia from Girard College - 1850. New York: Smith Brothers & Co., ca. 1850. The American Antiquarian Society holds a substantial manuscript archive for the Smith Brothers, a publishing firm located in Maine and New York. Four brothers formed the firm, which specialized in the printing of folio lithographed ...
It's that time again—the latest issue of the Almanac is now out! This issue features stories from every department at the Society, from curatorial and readers' services to outreach and digital humanities. Some highlights include: a generous gift to AAS from a local member and former AAS councilor a new digital project featuring Isaiah Thomas's collection of ...
A year ago today, we announced work on a database that would make the extensive financial records of Mathew Carey, a Dublin native who came to Philadelphia in 1784, navigable. One St. Patrick’s Day later, we are happy to announce that this resource now exists. Carey’s records include receipts, bills, memoranda, invoices, bills of lading, ...
I am currently in the throes of infancy with a nine-month-old who, by any evaluation of her current book-handling technique, is not destined to become a rare book librarian. She literally attacks the written word without mercy or proper treatment. Here she is “reading” her copy of Plip-Plop Pond, created by a company called Indestructibles. This ...
Box with Nine Congress Quill Pens. New York: Emanuel De Young, ca. 1850. This box of goose quill pens was purchased jointly by the manuscript curator, who wanted to add the pens to our holdings of writing implements, and the graphic arts curator, who wanted the box and label for the ephemera collection. De Young produced ...
Every quarter at AAS we release a list of recent publications by those who have researched at the library as fellows, members, or readers. To see this list, as well as a list of works published from 2000-2014, please visit our recent scholarship page on the AAS website. If your book, article, or other achievement is not included, ...
We at AAS have figured out one way to beat the winter blues: Omeka! Thanks to the generosity of Jay Last (member since 1987), we held a two-day training session for our staff to learn this content management system for online exhibitions of special collections. Omeka is not archival software, but it was developed at ...
A Present for the Young. New York: D. Waugh and T. Mason for the Sunday School Union of the Methodist Episcopal Church, 1833. This wonderfully detailed hand-colored wood engraving is the frontispiece to A Present for the Young and illustrates the role of the family as the epicenter of literacy and civilization. Note the family gathered around ...
Melanie Kiechle is assistant professor of history at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University and is presently an American Antiquarian Society-National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow at the Society. Her current project is entitled “Smell Detectives: An Olfactory History of Nineteenth-Century America" and she recently sat down with us to discuss her work and research ...
Crouch, F[rederick] Nicholls. Norma. A Serio-Comic Burlesque, Written Expressly for Sanford’s Opera House. [Philadelphia?, 1856]. The 10 opera or song libretti in Italian and English bound together in this sammelband were all lacking or defective in AAS collections. Most are for serious Italian operas, but also included is a previously unlocated burlesque of Vincenzo Bellini’s opera ...
This week, AAS was fortunate to receive a hand-made, circa 1830, valentine as a donation. Society member George K. Fox of California presented the valentine to AAS President Ellen Dunlap at an event at the San Francisco Book Club celebrating the Society’s receipt of the National Humanities Medal. The Society has a large and representative collection ...
Let’s say you are the publisher of a newspaper in a small mining town in Colorado and you run out of the regular paper you use to print your publication. What do you do? In the case of The Silver World published in Lake City, Colorado, you find an alternative source of paper. Recently AAS acquired ...
