In its most recent issue, The Worcester Review featured original poetry and artwork by AAS creative artist fellows. Edited by Kevin Wisniewski, Director of Book History and Digital Initiatives, the feature is the first of a two-part series to be included in the print literary/art journal. Founded in 1972, The Worcester Review is published annually by ...
Rosanna Sizer. Female Whig of ’76. New London, Conn.: Jonathan Sizer, 2nd., 1840. According to the imprint on this 1840 broadside, Rosanna Sizer wrote this poem in 1777, shortly after Danbury, Connecticut, was burned by the British in April of that year. A family connection between Rosanna and the publisher, Jonathan Sizer, appears likely (he may ...
Clark, B. (Benjamin), Sen. The Past, Present and Future in Prose and Poetry. Toronto: Adam, Stevenson, & Co., 1867. BIB #565812 Benjamin Clark was born to emancipated African American parents in Maryland in 1801, and he died in Detroit in 1864. He married, had ten children, and lived with his family in Pennsylvania. He also established ...
We love the moments when an artist fellow discovers something totally unique and profound relating to their research. Whether finding an outline of a pressed dandelion in handwritten poem, a children’s book on natural philosophy, the diary of a freed slave who in 1822 sailed to Hawaii as a missionary, or early photographs taken in Yellowstone National Park, these “ah-ha” moments often lead to an unfoldment of ...
This week we continue our Artists in the AAS Archive series. This installment offers a spotlight on four past fellows: poet James Arthur; poet and nonfiction author Christopher Cokinos; Cartoonist R. Sikoryak; and artist Stephanie Wolff. This series is part of our celebration of the 25th anniversary of Artist fellowships at the American Antiquarian Society. More ...
The curators at AAS connect audiences with objects, such as the manuscript poems of Phillis Wheatley. As some visitors to AAS know, the Society holds two original manuscript poems of Wheatley’s, “To the University of Cambridge” and “On the Death of the Revd. Dr. Sewall.” These items may be found in the AAS catalog here. ...
In April, we published an article in honor of National Poetry Month, entitled "Poets in the AAS Archive." In this same thread, we are pleased to share our plans now to create a new series on Past is Present dedicated to our artist fellows.
This new series will spotlight the work of current and past fellows ...
In 1995, the Society welcomed its first class of a new kind of fellow. They were the Creative and Performing Artist and Writers Fellows, and they included fiction writers, poets, playwrights, visual artists, sculptors, performance artists, and musicians, as well as non-fiction writers, documentary filmmakers, journalists anyone seeking to create original works based upon American ...
Tara Bynum has been assistant professor of African American literature and culture at Hampshire College since fall 2017. She previously taught at the College of Charleston and Towson University and has published articles on Phillis Wheatley in Legacy: A Journal of American Women Writers and Common-place and other works of cultural criticism in the Los ...
Earlier blog posts have promoted a soon-to-debut online resource that will feature highlights from the William C. Cook Jacksonian Era Collection. Here’s another of those one-of-a-kind items. Today we feature an unrecorded elegy written after the death of Jackson by a poet previously unknown to the literary world (perhaps for good reason).
Ode, Elegy, &c. on the ...
Ali Phaneuf is a rising sophomore at Fairfield University and is currently a readers’ services summer page. As a journalism major and an art minor, Ali has always been an avid book reader, and her love of books and creativity was able to grow through her experience at AAS.
The story of “Mary had ...
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 ...
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 ...
Afternoon Tea: Rhymes for Children. New York: Thomas Nelson and Sons; London: Frederick Warne and Co., ca. 1880.
This delicate color-printed illustration of children at play is taken from a book of children’s poetry published jointly in New York and London by the England-based houses of Thomas Nelson and Sons and Frederick Warne. Both publishers were ...
We've had an interesting lineup of public programs so far this spring, exploring everything from nineteenth-century theater and attitudes towards alcohol to what life was like for free and enslaved African Americans in Massachusetts during the prelude to the Revolutionary War.
Tomorrow, Thursday, May 29, at 7:00 p.m., we'll continue our series with a talk by ...
