Abraham Lincoln [detail]John C. Yorston and Co., 1896. 1954.1563. Congratulations to our friends across town at the National Constitution Center! Last Friday they announced the good news that they’ve acquired acquired a printed copy of the Emancipation Proclamation signed by Abraham Lincoln and William Seward. The Rosenbach isn’t fortunate enough to have a copy of …
Bible. The Whole Booke of Psalmes, Faithfully Translated into the English Metre.[Cambridge, Mass:] [Stephen Day], 1640. A640w. The oldest surviving book printed in what became the United States is, as is widely known, The Whole Booke of Psalmes, a.k.a the Bay Psalm Book. Eleven copies of it are known to exist — one of which …
Jerome Kern (1885-1945), inscription to A.S.W. Rosenbach in Nine Answers by G. Bernard Shaw… [New York:] Privately printed for Jerome Kern, 1923Ro3 923sh Tucked away in Doctor Rosenbach’s personal library is this little volume, an inscribed Christmas gift from Hall of Fame songwriter and legendary book collector Jerome Kern. And when you come across the …
[Noah Webster, 1758-1843] The Pirates: A Tale for the Amusement and Instruction of Youth… Philadelphia: Johnson and Warner, 1813. A 813p This little book caught my eye as I trolled through the Library shelves one recent morning. Actually, I could only see the spine, which is blank, but that’s really the only invitation one needs …
From the Papers of Marianne Moore: MM V:16:11.Marion V. Dorn. Correspondence with Marianne Moore, 1948-1964.
One of the concerns of the Rosenbach’s current exhibition, Look Again: African American History IS American History is identifying the ways in which African American history has been preserved. An unexpected pair of books from Marianne Moore’s library prove to be an interesting source of African-American history: Canti d’Amore e di Lavoro dei Negri d’America …
I use Wikipedia all the time. It’s handy. Now, I’m not an expert on anything, so relying on an open-source encyclopedia has its dangers. This fact became clear to me when trying to confirm the date of Marianne Moore’s death using Wikipedia. I didn’t get that far in the Moore entry, though because of this …
When I first stumbled across this letter, I thought I’d found the pronunciation key to the name “Rosenbach.” Here at the Rosenbach Museum & Library we pronounce our founders’ surname “Rosenback,” rhyming it with smack. The lore around here states that Philip and Abraham pronounced it that way. Most everyone else, though, tends to rhyme …
Or perhaps I should say “buckarü.”Answer to be posted soon. UPDATE: Marlene Dietrich. This undated photo resides in the Papers of Mercedes de Acosta here at the Rosenbach. Dietrich looks pretty young in this photo — it was probably taken before she moved to Hollywood in 1930. Given the effort she and Josef von Sternberg …
Truman Capote is in the air these days. (I really liked Philip Seymour Hoffman in Capote, though I do have a small gripe with the Academy giving Oscars to actors playing celebrities — e.g. Hoffman, Reese Witherspoon, Jamie Foxx, Cate Blanchett, etc. — but that’s another post on another blog.) Forty years ago this November …