A Present for the Young. New York: D. Waugh and T. Mason for the Sunday School Union of the Methodist Episcopal Church, 1833. This wonderfully detailed hand-colored wood engraving is the frontispiece to A Present for the Young and illustrates the role of the family as the epicenter of literacy and civilization. Note the family gathered around ...
Chances are if you are looking at this, you like to read. If you are the least bit curious about reading habits in America and how they have been presented in books and images over the past three centuries, I encourage you to visit a new exhibition at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. Last week ...
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. ...
A Place of Reading. That phrase defines Antiquarian Hall. Reading is an everyday occupation for those of us in Antiquarian Hall whether staff or, yes, readers. But it is also part of the title for the newest online exhibition posted on the AAS website. How did this one come to pass? It started over twenty ...
