In the summer of 2023, while completing my MA in book conservation at West Dean College in Chichester, England, I undertook a 10-week internship at the American Antiquarian Society, working alongside Chief Conservator Babette Gehnrich and Library and Archives Conservator Marissa Maynard. In between my time spent writing a thesis, attending a week-long course on ...
Book bans and challenges have been on the rise in libraries and schools across the United States: according to the American Library Association, who have tracked book censorship since 1982, over 1,600 titles have been affected in 2022 alone. These challenges, whether for political, legal, religious, or moral motivations, illuminate a variety of the nation’s ...
Johnson, Andrew W. The Eclectic Harmony. Revised and improved second edition. Shelbyville, Tenn.: N.O. Wallace & Co., Printers, Shelbyville Free Press Office, 1847. Only one other copy is known of this title, and that was purchased in 2001 by the Center for Popular Music at Middle Tennessee State University. Then just this past year a private ...
Chronicles of New England. Chap. 1000. [United States: s.n., 1826-7?] Two copies of the earlier Chapter 999 have been traced (one of which was already at AAS), but this appears to be the only copy of Chapter 1000. When it appeared at auction this fall, we had to have it. A satire written in Biblical style, ...
Constitution and By-Laws of the Hook & Ladder Company, No. 1, Cleveland. Cleveland: Rice & Penniman, 1836. APPARENTLY UNRECORDED, ONLY KNOWN COPY! Rice & Penniman were known to be printing in Cleveland, Ohio, in the mid-1830s, but this particular pamphlet is evidently entirely unrecorded. The Constitution for this firefighting company defines the duties of the Officers, who ...
Travellers' Rough Notes, on Niagara Falls. Black Rock, NY: Smith H. Salisbury, 1827. APPARENTLY UNRECORDED, ONLY KNOWN COPY! Please excuse the yelling, but we get excited at AAS when we are able to add a new piece to scholarly and bibliographical knowledge. Though tiny (just a little over 11cm in height) this small pamphlet represents just such ...
Writings of Omaha. Chicago: S. S. Jones, Publisher, Religio-Philosophical Journal Office, 1869. APPARENTLY UNRECORDED, ONLY KNOWN COPY! Describing the nature of reality, electricity, and the spirit realm in 61 numbered paragraphs, this overview of Spiritualist theory is also an apparently unrecorded Ante-Fire Chicago imprint. The 26-page pamphlet in its original printed green wrappers was issued by the ...
In the next couple of months, Past is Present will be highlighting a number of gifts received in honor of the American Antiquarian Society’s bicentennial. Remember, there is still time to join the group of bicentennial donors. It continues to surprise me when I talk with people who are laboring under the misconception that AAS focuses ...
Update: This item has already been adopted, but you can browse the 2012 Adopt-A-Book Catalog to search among the 150 items up for adoption. Or join us for the fifth annual Adopt-A-Book event will be held on Tuesday, April 3, at 6 p.m. when there will be 50 new items up for adoption! The Queen ...
Bidwell, George, d. 1885. Treatise on the imposition of forms … also, tables of signatures, etc., useful to compositors, pressmen, and publishers. New York: Raymond & Caulon, 1865. Rare first edition of one of the few dedicated handbooks for printers on “imposition,” that is, the arrangement of text pages in the “forme” placed on the bed ...
Ker, Patrick, fl. 1691. The map of man’s misery. Or, The poor man’s pocket-book. Being a perpetual almanack of spiritual meditations … Boston: Printed by T. G. for B. Eliot, [ca. 1710?] The only known copy of a newly discovered early American imprint. Patrick Ker’s collection of meditations, arranged in a seven-day “week” extending from childhood ...
Phillips, John. A sermon on the Trinity. [New York]: Sold by Mr. Mitchel, book-binder, Maiden Lane, New-York; Mr. Pike, store-keeper, John Street; and Mrs. Mary Davis, store-keeper, New-Brunswick, [1794] Third known copy of an unusual American imprint, as yet unreported to the North American Imprints Project (NAIP) or the English Short Title Catalogue (ESTC). John Phillips ...
David Whitesell, curator of books, reports on a recent acquisition: Die Wahre Brandtewein-Brennerey, oder Brandtewein- Gin- und Cordialmacher-Kunst: wie auch die a?chte Fa?rbe-Kunst, Blau, Roth, Gelb und Gru?n zu fa?rben, auf Baumwalle, Leinen, und Wolle … [Reading, PA?: Gottlob Jungmann and Carl Andreas Bruckmann?], 1802. Very rare third of four recorded editions of what might be ...
Purely physical love for a book can sometimes be a book’s worst enemy. By fingering the books, prints, manuscripts, and newspapers in AAS collections, each reader and researcher contributes to the slow death of our materials. In his novel In the Name of the Rose, Umberto Eco writes that the saliva and dust left behind ...
In April 1836, the future attorney and activist Richard Henry Dana was busy binding books aboard the brig Alert. Yes, binding books, not reading them. Dana might have been reading had a bad case of the measles and an even worse case of myopia not forced him to leave Harvard for a couple of years. ...
