One of the neat things about working as a cataloger at the American Antiquarian Society is solving the puzzles that come across my desk. I work exclusively on books and pamphlets published in the early nineteenth century, and over the course of 200 years title pages are lost, authors are forgotten, and people disappear into ...
As has been blogged on Past is Present before, AAS has an extensive and representative assortment of nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century valentines. Part of the Graphic Arts Collection, these ephemeral pieces of affection were exchanged on or before February 14, as Valentine’s Day provided the perfect opportunity to give that special someone a card. Many were ...
As a cataloger for the North American Imprints Program, my job is to catalogue books and pamphlets printed and published in North America between 1801 and 1820. I describe them, I put them into context with other books and pamphlets, and I become the latest person to handle an item that is two centuries old. Many ...
The Society's Graphic Arts collection is a wonderful place for browsing, looking for visual evidence of whatever topic you may be working on. I have helped researchers hunt in the collection on such broad topics as death, food production, and dress, and as specific as orphaned children, methods of doing laundry, and book shop interiors. As ...
It’s no wonder Louis Prang is considered the “Father of the American Christmas Card.” During the height of chromolithography in the 1860s, 70s, and 80s, Prang’s firm in Boston introduced the concept of the Christmas card to America and produced over 5 million greeting cards per year. While Prang’s Christmas cards are displayed often, in ...
Although we might think of Santa and an evergreen Christmas tree as inevitably wedded in nineteenth-century children’s book illustration, that was not necessarily the case. Until about 1840, New Year’s Day was favored over Christmas as the family-appropriate winter holiday in the young American Republic, particularly in New England, where the descendants of the Puritans ...
Nothing is hair-raising quite like a chilling photograph. This month, when the occult is most heavily sought after in popular culture, we made a small collection accessible which examines death, the afterlife, photography, technology, and (naturally) print culture. AAS’s impressive collection of stereocard views includes a subset categorized as “Ghost” images. This includes approximately 31 images ...
Many magazines of the nineteenth century were published with paper wrappers, the purpose of which were to protect the issue as it went through the mail on its way to the subscriber’s home. These wrappers (often on colored paper) would identify the name of the periodical. Sometimes they would just reproduce the title page, but ...
I recently scanned a few boxes of glass negatives from the collection, all made by one Benjamin T. Hill, an amateur photographer and local historian elected to the Antiquarian Society in 1901 who also served as an auditor for the Society for twenty-three years. These negatives were all made at a fair in Worcester in ...
With all eyes in the media directed towards the new addition to the royal family, we’ve taken a look back to seek out evidence in the historical record of this subject’s proportional popularity. Unsurprisingly, American buzz on the most recent princes and princesses is anything but new. Indeed, everything about Queen Victoria’s life was reported in ...
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 ...
The March 2013 issue of AJN: The American Journal of Nursing featured on its cover a well-known AAS collection item – A Map of the Open country of a Woman’s Heart by “A Lady” published by Kellogg c. 1833–1842. Throughout the month of April, we received queries about this image from nurses around the country. We ...
Shortly after their arrival, new AAS fellows give a talk to the staff about their project and the sorts of sources they’re hoping to find. In her talk, current fellow Jessica Linker, who is working on her Ph.D. at the University of Connecticut, mentioned that as part of her work on women and science she ...
Attribution is something libraries and museums struggle with every day. Who is the sitter in this portrait? Who is the author of this pamphlet? Often the objects give us clues, but not always. Sometimes they even lead us astray. This is the story of a pair of daguerreotypes at the American Antiquarian Society and how ...
This piece of sheet music in the Society’s collection represents a handful of Confederate imprints published by George Dunn and Company (printer) and written or edited by F.W. (Fitz William) Rosier. Even before official secession, and certainly after, the Confederate States produced their own government documents and publications; there were also religious pieces and education ...
