The Californian (San Francisco, CA). 70 issues, 1864-1867. This bound volume of The Californian begins with the first issue of May 28, 1864. It was primarily a weekly literary periodical with some local news thrown in. Charles Henry Webb started the paper but Bret Harte soon succeeded him as the editor. One of the contributors … Continue reading The Acquisitions Table: The Californian
Although the majority of AAS’s manuscript collection is focused on New England, we do have collections that cover other parts of the country. Our Book Trades Collection and Slavery in the US Collection, for example, have a national scope, and collections such as the Louisiana Collection and the California Papers are focused outside of New … Continue reading California Gold
As was mentioned in a post last week, Americans will be marking the 150th anniversaries of the great events of the Civil War over the next four years. Many of the battles, commanders and regiments of that conflict have become legends, and the narrative of a nation split apart, brother fighting against brother, remains compelling. … Continue reading The Civil War Comes to California
An earlier post about bibliographies on everything from the California Gold Rush to tomatoes got me wondering about the impetus behind that heady experience (the Gold Rush, not the tomatoes). How did a man who heard all the fairy-tale stories of incredible wealth just waiting to be picked out of the rivers make the difficult … Continue reading “It seems to me that a sick man in California digging gold in the water up to his knees would look funny”
On May 25-26, 2021, the American Antiquarian Society is hosting a virtual conference that will bring together a range of scholars in conversation about new directions in textual editing and scholarly editions. Since the late 1960s, AAS has been a sponsor of the Cooper Edition, a scholarly edition of James Fenimore Cooper’s works with the … Continue reading Virtual Conference: Textual Editing and the Future of Scholarly Editions
This week we continue our Artists in the AAS Archive series. This installment offers a spotlight on four more past fellows: book artist Maureen Cummins; performer-scholar Anne Harley; playwright and screenwriter Jeffrey Hatcher; and playwright and performer Laurie McCants. This series celebrates the 25th anniversary of Artist fellowships at the American Antiquarian Society. More information … Continue reading Artists in the AAS Archive: September 2020
The American Antiquarian Society houses more than a thousand photographs and glass-plate negatives produced by photographer Theodore Clemens Wohlbrück (1879–1936) between 1900 and 1910. Since 2010, we have periodically highlighted different aspects of the collection on this blog, including information about Wohlbrück’s views of towns in Worcester County, his photographs of urban architecture, and a … Continue reading A New AAS Illustrated Inventory: The Wohlbrück Collection
On May 17, 2018, during the annual meeting of the American Historical Print Collector’s Society (AHPCS) in California, the American Antiquarian Society received the Ewell L. Newman Book Award for our exhibition catalog Radiant with Color & Art: McLoughlin Brothers and the Business of Picture Books, 1858–1920. The Newman Book Award recognizes and encourages outstanding … Continue reading AAS Catalog Is an Award-Winner!
AAS collects American printed materials of all kinds, including multiple types of ephemera, from broadsides to tickets to ribbon badges. We have recently completed an illustrated inventory of the Society’s collection of more than 170 ribbon badges, ranging in date from 1824 to 1900. The inventory includes ribbons worn during political campaigns and civic events … Continue reading “A Lot of Handsome Badges”: A New Illustrated Inventory
The exhibition Radiant with Color & Art: McLoughlin Brothers and the Business of Picture Books, 1858–1920, now on display at the Grolier Club in New York, is the culmination of my three decades’ worth of work in cataloging, documenting, and interpreting the output of this titan New York publisher that dominated color picture book publishing … Continue reading My Thirty Years’ Adventure with McLoughlin Brothers
One of the duties of a curator at the American Antiquarian Society is to interact with dealers of antiquarian books, manuscripts, and paper ephemera. Over time we develop professional relationships with them as we get to know what type of materials they have, and they get to know our wants. In 2003 I was using … Continue reading Tribute to a Great Friend and Book Dealer
Each year as Halloween comes around, the staff here at AAS tries to think of ways to feature the spooky, scary, and creepy material in the Society’s collection. We have shown off our postcard collection and some fright-inducing stereograph photos. We’ve hunted for ghost stories, featured gift book illustrations of the supernatural, and peered into … Continue reading Boo! Bookplates!
Want to see a souvenir score card from the 1915 World Series between the Red Sox and the Phillies? How about first editions by Lewis Carroll, Stephen King, Jonathan Swift, Sylvia Plath, or Toni Morrison? A signed photograph of Harry Houdini? A book printed from wood blocks in 1250? An illustrated Japanese edition of Don … Continue reading Visit AAS at the Boston International Antiquarian Book Fair!
Earlier this year the American Antiquarian Society acquired an important archive of manuscripts and drawings related to American missionary activity in Western Africa. The collection tells the story of a couple, Emily Griswold (1838-1906) and her eventual husband, Benjamin Hartley (1838-1912). Emily was the daughter of the poet and publisher Rufus Wilmot Griswold, who edited anthologies, … Continue reading The Story of Emily & Benjamin
When preparing an exhibit for our recent Digital Antiquarian conference we included items related to the famous interaction of two writers at different points in their public careers: Ralph Waldo Emerson and Walt Whitman. (This was prompted by the participation of the Whitman Project in our digital projects showcase.) Whitman used Emerson’s private correspondence to promote … Continue reading Emerson and Whitman: Sage Meets Free Spirit
