This week marks the 200th anniversary of the final surrender of Napoleon. Defeated at the Battle of Waterloo on June 18, 1815, Napoleon retreated to Paris and then fled towards Rochefort, hoping to escape on a French frigate and head to the United States. A British blockade prevented his escape and on July 15th, 1815 …
Hi everyone! I’m Allison, the Rosenbach’s newest collections intern! I’ve just returned to Philadelphia after spending the past semester abroad in London, England. I was so excited to explore all of the works by all of the British authors at the Rosenbach. Eventually, I came across a number of works by Charlotte Brontë, but one …
With last Friday’s Supreme Court decision on same-sex marriage and this weekend’s commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the 1965 march in Philadelphia that helped spark the LGBT-rights movement, it seems a good time for a post about one of the most famous lesbian figures in the Rosenbach collection: the writer and socialite Mercedes de …
What do the Marianne Moore room and the American Samoa state quarter have in common? They both feature a tanoa. A tanoa, as I just learned this week, is a Samoan ceremonial bowl. Marianne Moore’s brother Warner sent her the bowl as a gift, presumably when he was stationed in Samoa as a Navy chaplain …
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 …
“I’ve put in so many enigmas and puzzles that it will keep the professors busy for centuries arguing over what I meant, and that’s the only way of insuring one’s immortality.” Jame’s Joyce’s famous quip about Ulysses is a challenge which exhibition curator Beth Blum takes up in this year’s Bloomsday exhibition: Deciphering Ulysses: A …
Is your home equipped with a monteith? The Rosenbach certainly is. John Sutton, monteith. London, 1708. 1954.1784 Rosenbach of the Free Library of Philadelphia What, you may well ask is a monteith. A monteith is a vessel with a notched rim that served to hold the feet of stemware while their bowls were chilled in …
Marianne Moore listening to playback of her recording in Caedmon’s studio in New York, 1956. From the Rosenbach of the Free Library of Philadelphia, Moore XII:28:07, 2006.7542. Did you know June is Audio Book Month? I had no idea, but I’m a late adopter: it took a 13-hour drive to Charleston last summer for me …
This week marked the end of the four-and-a-half year run of our “Today in the Civil War” blog and this weekend is also the final weekend of our Oscar Wilde in Philadelphia exhibit, so what better way to celebrate both of these occasions than with a poem by Walt Whitman about the death of Abram …
In celebration of Bike to Work Day, here are some wonderful images of bicycles from our collection. George Cruikshank, Hairbrain. London, 1818.The Rosenbach of the Free Library of Philaedelphia.1954.1880.0880 This image dates from around 1818, when early bicycles became popular in England. The sheet refers to the man as riding “a velocipede,” a word imported …