With the holiday season upon us, many of us are busy finding, buying, or making gifts for our friends and family. The Rosenbach’s collections are full of objects with gift giving in their history and this week I’m offering up an idiosyncratic selection of some of my favorite gifted items. (Just for clarity, these items …
The Rosenbach is located on the 2000 block of Delancey Place because that was the home of our founders, Philip and A.S.W. Rosenbach. But there are other locations around Philadelphia that were important to them as well, and probably none more so than 1320 Walnut Street. The brothers’ business, the Rosenbach Company, operated out of …
George Cruikshank, “The Norfolk Turkey Coach.” from Peter Parley’s Tales About Christmas, 1838. The Rosenbach of the Free Library of Philadelphia. 1954.1880.3189. This Cruikshank illustration comes from an 1838 book of Christmas stories, but tale’s description of the bustle and burden of holiday travel (and, of course, the centrality of turkeys to holiday feasting) could …
Dr. Rosenbach’s book-dealing prowess not only earned him an extensive clientele, an amazing personal collection, and the chance to publish about his exploits, but his widespread fame also gave him a star turn as the victim in a 1930 murder mystery. The Yorkshire Moorland Mystery (a.k.a The Yorkshire Moorland Murder) by J.S. Fletcher revolves around …
This week brought news of the first successful landing on a comet when the Philae probe landed on comet 67p, 310 million miles from earth. The comet even sings! The probe’s bad landing means that we may not get as much data as we’d hoped, but it’s still a pretty cool achievement. In honor of …
One of the things I love about working at the Rosenbach is that I’m always discovering new and fascinating things in the collection. I was flipping through the card catalog, in search of a completely different book, when I saw a card for an item with the wonderful title, The Strange and Unaccountable Life of …
This week marked what would have been the 100th birthday of Welsh writer Dylan Thomas, who was born October 27, 1914. Thomas was a gifted writer, but not so good at remembering where he put things (a problem tied in with his famous love of drink). The Rosenbach owns the manuscript of Under Milk Wood, …
If you haven’t been on our “Sleuths and Spies” hands-on-tour, you may not know that the Rosenbach owns Arthur Conan Doyle’s manuscript for the 1903 Sherlock Holmes story, The Adventure of the Empty House. Arthur Conan Doyle, The adventure of the empty house: autograph manuscript. 1903. EL4 .D754e 903. The Rosenbach of the Free Library …
Last week I was pleased to attend an excellent conference on James Logan and the Networks of Atlantic Culture and Politics, 1699-1751, co-sponsored by The Library Company, UPenn’s McNeil Center for Early American Studies, the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, and Stenton, James Logan’s home, now owned by the Colonial Dames. Logan came to Pennsylvania as …
Okay, so we all know we’re not supposed to do this to our books (although I suspect we’re probably all guilty of it, spine-breaking be hanged). But what do you use to mark your place? I must confess to grabbing whatever piece of paper is readily at hand–grocery receipts and library checkout slips being frequent …