Suggestions for interesting & useful collection materials
The American Antiquarian Society’s Graphic Arts department is currently in the early stages of a two-year long project entitled Prints in the Parlor. The project is funded by a grant from the National Endowment of the Humanities and focuses on cataloging engravings which would have appeared in the American parlor from 1820 to about 1876. ...
Toward the end of his now-famous 1897 Atlantic Monthly essay, "Strivings of the Negro People," W.E.B. DuBois states that the post-Civil War years brought for African Americans “the ideal of book-learning, the curiosity, born of compulsory ignorance.” Historians may note DuBois’ ultimate discontent with this ideal -- the longing to achieve freedom through ‘book-learning” -- ...
AAS holds in its manuscripts collections an excerpted diary of a convict from the 19th century. It is a small unassuming volume of just under fifty pages on plain brown paper, and doesn’t visually grab your attention. It was the title on the front page that piqued my curiosity: Promiscuous Leaves from My Diary. A glance ...
Here at AAS we have lots of small collections that are safely tucked away, accessible only due to the knowledge of the reference staff, catalogers, or curators who bump into them occasionally when searching for other things. As we work our way through our holdings we try to increase access to these “lost” collections ...
Today's university may be in need of a revolution of its own, what with its failure to create true interdisciplinary conversation and its isolation from the wider public. The late eighteenth-century college did not exist in such isolation from the people, though few colleges became hotbeds of revolutionary activity during the war like Queen's College (now Rutgers University). ...
Henry Box Brown (b. 1816) escaped lifelong slavery in Virginia by shipping himself in a box (with the help of white and African-American abolitionists) to Philadelphia in 1849. One of the few primary sources detailing his breathtaking escape to freedom is the children’s book Cousin Ann’s Stories for Children. Written in 1849 by Quaker abolitionist ...
Just in time for your winter viewing pleasure (who needs football?), the Graphic Arts team is pleased to announce that an inventory of the European Political Print Collection is now on-line and is fully illustrated. Have a look: http://www.americanantiquarian.org/Inventories/Europeanprints/ This is the latest work by our Graphic Arts Assistant Jaclyn Penny, who inventoried, described, re-foldered, and digitized ...
Recently the Graphic Arts staff at the American Antiquarian Society posted its latest illustrated inventory, a complete listing of political and social engraved satires from the Charles Peirce collection (yes, that last name is spelled correctly! Peirce, not Pierce!). You can have a look by following this link http://www.americanantiquarian.org/Inventories/Peirce/ Like many collections here at the Society, ...
Background: The books in the AAS collection began appearing long before a comprehensive cataloging system. Building on the foundational donation of Isaiah Thomas' personal library, members sent books to the Society, and according to the letter transcribed below, at times also removed them. Item: A letter from AAS member and prominent Worcester lawyer William Lincoln to statesman ...
Within the roughly 60,000 pieces of sheet music in the AAS collection, a devilish and spry Santa Claus waits for just this time of year. At the first talk of Christmas, he appears, dancing on a chimney while playing the violin. This 1846 incarnation of Santa Claus stands on the cover of the Santa Claus ...
Avis G. Clarke, cataloger-cum-researcher of early American imprints and printers, filled hundreds of AAS card catalogue drawers with the AAS printers’ file. Detailing the lives and works of virtually every printer working in America before 1820, the printers’ file is a masterpiece of indexing. Comprising 134 drawers of biographical, printing, and publication ...
AAS's The Children's Friend: A New Year's Present is one of just two known copies of the 1821 pamphlet. Fifteen centimeters tall and eight pages deep, the paper-covered volume stood little chance of survival in the hands of generations of American children. But there was one family fastidious enough for the task, and by chance ...
It's that time of year. Time to take ornaments out of boxes, shake the dust from stockings, and hang wreaths on front doors. The holiday season is no different at AAS. December is the one month when it's appropriate to pull out all of our wonderful Christmas treasures-- after all who wants to see Santa ...
Inadvertently, three graduate students were responsible for the creation of the Center for Historic American Visual Culture (CHAVic). Two appeared at AAS asking if we had 18th century prints or lithographs of wedding ceremonies. Another spoke of the struggle to convince her dissertation committee that a history thesis could focus successfully on stereographs. Between the ...
Proof that humor is not a modern invention: a joke to lighten our Wednesdays direct from John Davis to AAS Librarian Christopher Columbus Baldwin in the close of a February 4, 1832 letter. Can you tell why a catterpillar [sic] is like a woman churning butter? Do you give it up? Because she makes butterfly. No groans ...
