Inspired by the limericks from a few weeks back, this week we’re highlighting another humorous book from our collections: Journey to the gold diggins, by Jeremiah Saddlebags. This book of comic drawings was published in 1849, at the height of the gold rush, and pokes fun at the over-eager would-be gold miners. Journey to the …
Today marks the 250th anniversary of the repeal of the Stamp Act, which was passed on March 22, 1765 and repealed on March 18, 1766. As you may (or may not) recall from your American history classes, the Stamp Act was a tax on printed paper, including newspapers, legal documents, and playing cards. It was …
Anna Claypoole Peale, born in 1791, came from an accomplished family of artists. Her uncle was the famous Charles Willson Peale and her father, James Peale, had been trained by his older brother and was an accomplished painter of miniatures and, later on, of still lives. (Unlike her cousins, Anna avoided the pressure of being …
In 1846 Edward Lear published an illustrated collection of 72 limericks entitled A Book of Nonsense. The volume, which is referenced in our exhibit Wonderland Rules: Alice at 150 , helped popularize the limerick form and inspired a number of similar books by other people and organizations. One of these, The New Book of Nonsense, …
The books in the Rosenbach’s collection are fascinating for many different reasons, but this little gem has one of my favorite bindings. It is actually two separate texts bound together in what is known as a dos-a-dos binding. Dos-a-dos means “back to back” in French and that is exactly what this type of binding is. …
Most of us are probably familiar with Maya Angelou’s famous autobiography I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. But did you know that the title came from a nineteenth-century poem by the African-American poet Paul Laurence Dunbar? It is from his poem “Sympathy,” published in the 1899 collection Lyrics of the Hearthside. Its final verse …
This past week the Rosenbach has sent objects on loan to exhibitions at two other institutions: one traveled northward to Princeton and the others headed south to Alexandria. The Princeton loan is one of our two Thomas Sully portraits of Rebecca Gratz (we lovingly refer to her as “Rebecca without the hat”). She is normally …
Here are the answers from last week’s trivia-fest. 1) Which of the following words was NOT invented by Dodgson: Chortle Snark Galumph Telarian The answer is “telarian.” Both “chortle” and “galumph” come from Dodgson’s famous nonsense poem “Jabberwocky,” while a “snark” is a mysterious animal in his The Hunting of the Snark: an Agony in …
In honor of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson’s birthday this week (January 27), I’ve pulled together a quick quiz of Charles Dodgson/Alice in Wonderland trivia. Answers to come next week. Enjoy! 1) Which of the following words was NOT invented by Dodgson: Chortle Snark Galumph Telarian 2) Which of the animals in the caucus race of Alice …
One book which I was delighted, and a bit surprised, to discover on our shelves while doing shelf-reading, is Florence Nightingale’s Notes on Nursing: What it is and What it is Not. Notes on Nursing was published in 1859, after Nightingale had become a celebrity for her nursing reforms during the Crimean War. (If anyone …