The Knight of the Folding-Stick

Here at the Rosenbach we celebrate all things bookish.  Our latest exhibition, The Art of Ownership: Bookplates and Book Collectors from 1480 to the Present, celebrates the many wonderful bookplates throughout our collections and uses them to delve into the biographies of book collectors/owners.  I happened to stumble upon another curiously self-referential book about books …

Mary Shelley Acquisitions

We’re delighted to announce that the Rosenbach has recently acquired a rare first edition (1818) of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus, as well as first editions of Shelley’s novels Valperga (1823), The Last Man (1826), The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck (1830), and Falkner (1837).  These terrific additions to our collections of English Romantic …

Moore on Vinyl

Marianne Moore listening to playback of her recording in Caedmon’s studio in New York, 1956.  From the Rosenbach of the Free Library of Philadelphia, Moore XII:28:07, 2006.7542. Did you know June is Audio Book Month?  I had no idea, but I’m a late adopter: it took a 13-hour drive to Charleston last summer for me …

Fiasco! Act III

Act III: All Apologies Opera [Works] of Apuleius.  Rome: Petri de Maximo, 1469 (edition princeps).  The Rosenbach of the Free Library of Philadelphia, Incun469a.  Within this fiasco-themed mini-series we’ve so far looked at collections that hint at theatrical and political debacles. This final act concerns a legal fiasco, and this one goes back to the …

Fiasco! Act I

Kathy is away this week working on something Sherlockian (which I’m sure you’ll read about here soon).  In the meantime, this week’s blog post is motivated by perhaps the most notorious episode of NPR’s This American Life, which was the topic of lunchtime conversation recently at the Rosenbach.  The theme: fiascos.  If you want to …