The Dakota language primer shown above contains several woodcut illustrations. Most of them are bucolic, Currier & Ives type jobs — farmers working the fields, bonnetted little girls holding flower baskets in quaint cottage door ways, children sailing on a windy, but not threatening, lake, etc., etc. (Most of them depicting scenes not in the …
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Newsflash! Vacuum Cleaner Sucks Up Budgen!
After posting about Frank Budgen (pictured above) last week, I was reminded about another important role Budgen played in the production of Ulysses. I was most certainly remiss in excluding it from the previous post. Our esteemed Associate Director, Mike Barsanti (see artist’s conception to the right), who is piled higher and deeper in these …
Deadwood on the Line
I’m all giddied up because the third season of Deadwood came out on DVD last week. I don’t have HBO, let alone cable, so I can’t watch the episodes as they air. I guess that makes me a cable t.v. shoobie. I’ve recently been looking through some letters that relate to Deadwood, S.D., and have …
Bloomsday Is Nigh Upon Us
Bloomsday is this Saturday, June 16th. See you there. I’m not privy to all of the preparations for the glorious occasion, but I sincerely hope our Bloomsday coordinator, the redoubtable Joyce scholar Janine Utell, has arranged for the above scene to be re-enacted tableau vivant-style at the conclusion of the Proteus chapter readings (around 12:45 …
Musings on Rosenbach Sculpture
When I emerge from my little hidey-hole off the reading room here at the Rosenbach, I come onto the third floor hall only to have my eyes alight upon this scene:Now, nothing against this fine piece, or more technically, this “polychrome carved and gilded lime wood figure of St. Michael slaying a demon” as our …
Harry Houdini: Male Human Characterized By Mysteriousness, or the Enigma Wrapped in a Straightjacket and Chains and Then Stuffed in a Milk Can
A colleague brought this unfortunate news item to my attention last week. It seems one of the world’s largest collections of Harry Houdini material went up in flames last December when a crack-smoking burglar set the collector’s house on fire. The smoker, Mr. Jarrod Frederick, escaped the blazing home of Dr. Randall Wolf even if …
Lonely Leaf Needs a Friend: Can You Spare €45,000?
We recently received a bulletin from Dr. Jörn Günther, rare book dealer of Hamburg, announcing that he has, among his stock of jaw-dropping medieval manuscripts, a curious little printed trifle: a leaf from a Gutenberg Bible. This leaf comes from an incomplete copy that previously belonged to Maria Elisabeth Augusta von Sulzbach. It eventually made …
It Was 110 Years Ago Today
Speaking of Bram Stoker, I learned here that today is the anniversary of the publication of Dracula, a mere 110 years ago. The Count, of course, hasn’t aged a bit. Dracula’s dust jacket, the only known extant example of which can be seen above, has aged quite a bit. Alas, such is the fate of …
Blood of the Vampire (Writer) Descends Upon DeLancey Place
Recently, we were graced with a visit from a descendant of Bram Stoker. The delightful Dacre and Jenne Stoker stopped by to examine our set of Bram’s manuscript notes for Dracula. (Bram was Dacre’s great uncle. I’m sure Mr. Stoker has heard more than his share of quips, bons mots, and bad jokes about blood …
Ask and Ye Shall Receive
While researching A.S.W. Rosenbach’s Hebrew language studies (see below), I really hoped to find some manuscript evidence of his Hebrew class work. I didn’t have any luck then, but thanks to the the highly proficient PACSCL information professionals presently on our premises, just such evidence has surfaced. The above is a page of notes Abie …