The idea of April Fools is nothing new. In the 18th century, bookseller William Creech, who published Burns’s poetry, responded to an April Fools’ joke with this retort: I pardon, sir, the trick you’ve play’d me When an April fool you made me ; Since one day only I appear What you, alas ! do …
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Gold Rush Washout
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 …
Stamping Out the Stamp Act
Today marks the 250th anniversary of the repeal of the Stamp Act, which was passed on March 22, 1765 and repealed on March 18, 1766.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 …
Marvelous Miniatures: Anna Claypoole Peale
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 …
There Was A Sweet Girl of Kingsessing…
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, …
Dos-a-dos, It’s Not Just for Square Dancing
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. …
Oak and Ivy
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 …
North and South: Objects on the Road
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 …
The Sad Tale of the Whaleship Essex
Today marks the 195th anniversary of the sinking of the whaleship Essex, which was famously “stove by a whale” on November 20, 1820. I’m a bit of a maritime history junkie, so I’ve made reference to the story before, but with a major movie about the wreck opening in December, it seemed that it could …
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 …