The Strange and Unaccountable Life of Daniel Dancer, Esquire, Who Died in a Sack, Though Worth Upward of £3000 a Year

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 …

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 …

Men and Maps

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 …

Bookmarking

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 …