This blog post was written by Andrew White With a beautiful Vale Press book (Wilde’s House of Pomegranates) on display in the Rosenbach’s current Of Two Minds exhibit, William Morris has been on my mind; Morris’s renowned Kelmscott Press was a significant influence on Charles Ricketts and Charles Shannon when they created Vale Press. This week …
The game is afoot to ferret out the realm of detective and spy literature at the Rosenbach. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to explore early mystery stories, examine an original cypher belonging to a female Civil War spy, and exercise your sleuthing skills to detect a forgery.
Shakespeare’s youthful narrative poems made his reputation as a writer; his sonnets continue to bewitch and bewilder readers, and the poems in his plays cast spells, calm seas, and unite lovers. Through looking at editions of Shakespeare from the early 17th through the late 19th century, this Hands-on Tour will explore the ways Shakespeare used (more…)
Covering female poets from the 16th century to the 20th century, this new Hands-On Tour highlights remarkable female poets in the Rosenbach collection, including Phillis Wheatley, Anne Bradstreet, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and Emily Dickinson. Through manuscripts, commonplace books, and first editions of their writing, we will discuss their extraordinary ways of creating identities, adaptation to adversity, and breaking conventions through poetry.
This blog post was written by Andrew White 18th-century acting superstar David Garrick has a birthday on February 19; he would have been 401. Though he may no longer be a household name, Garrick is partly responsible for contemporary culture’s reverence of Shakespeare, as well as for the genesis of the Rosenbach’s Shakespeare collection—which visitors …
On January 25, 1759, the poet Robert Burns was born in Ayrshire, Scotland. The anniversary of his birth is celebrated all over the world with scotch, songs, and poems by the prolific writer. Robert Burns holds a special place in the Rosenbach: our collection houses some remarkable early editions (including a stunning Kilmarnock edition that …
Female novelists of the 19th and 18th centuries traveled different routes to find readership for their work. Some used male or deliberately ambiguous pseudonyms; others published anonymously before claiming their creations. Through early editions and manuscripts of Frances Burney, Mary Shelley, Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, and George Elliot, we will explore the ingenuity these immortal writers used to bring their masterpieces before the public.
The Rosenbach is well known for the works of James Joyce and Bram Stoker, but the “English Literature” collections include many other notable Irish authors as well. In addition to Ulysses and Dracula, we’ll read and handle works by some of these others, and look at their connections and influences extending from Thomas Jefferson and Moby-Dick to the present day.
Get up close and personal with Bram Stoker’s handwritten notes (character and chapter outlines, chronologies, and more!) for Dracula as Rosenbach staff explore what it takes to create an enduring monster.
Discover the hidden histories of lesbian and gay literary figures through their writings and artwork–both published and private. From Oscar Wilde’s tumultuous relationships with illustrator Aubrey Beardsley and poet/translator Lord Alfred Douglas, to the open secret of writer Mercedes de Acosta’s entanglements with Marlene Dietrich and Greta Garbo, the constellations of friends and lovers around these provocateurs shed light on the lives of queer artists in their respective eras.