Bible. The Whole Booke of Psalmes, Faithfully Translated into the English Metre.[Cambridge, Mass:] [Stephen Day], 1640. A640w. The oldest surviving book printed in what became the United States is, as is widely known, The Whole Booke of Psalmes, a.k.a the Bay Psalm Book. Eleven copies of it are known to exist — one of which …
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On Jerome Kern, George Bernard Shaw, Lars Ulrich, and More
Jerome Kern (1885-1945), inscription to A.S.W. Rosenbach in Nine Answers by G. Bernard Shaw… [New York:] Privately printed for Jerome Kern, 1923Ro3 923sh Tucked away in Doctor Rosenbach’s personal library is this little volume, an inscribed Christmas gift from Hall of Fame songwriter and legendary book collector Jerome Kern. And when you come across the …
The Pirates: A Tale for the Amusement and Instruction of Youth
[Noah Webster, 1758-1843] The Pirates: A Tale for the Amusement and Instruction of Youth… Philadelphia: Johnson and Warner, 1813. A 813p This little book caught my eye as I trolled through the Library shelves one recent morning. Actually, I could only see the spine, which is blank, but that’s really the only invitation one needs …
Posted Without Comment
From the Papers of Marianne Moore: MM V:16:11.Marion V. Dorn. Correspondence with Marianne Moore, 1948-1964.
Canti dei Negri d’America and Proverbi dei Negri d’America
One of the concerns of the Rosenbach’s current exhibition, Look Again: African American History IS American History is identifying the ways in which African American history has been preserved. An unexpected pair of books from Marianne Moore’s library prove to be an interesting source of African-American history: Canti d’Amore e di Lavoro dei Negri d’America …
Iran? Marianne?
I use Wikipedia all the time. It’s handy. Now, I’m not an expert on anything, so relying on an open-source encyclopedia has its dangers. This fact became clear to me when trying to confirm the date of Marianne Moore’s death using Wikipedia. I didn’t get that far in the Moore entry, though because of this …
You Say Tomato, We Say Tomato
When I first stumbled across this letter, I thought I’d found the pronunciation key to the name “Rosenbach.” Here at the Rosenbach Museum & Library we pronounce our founders’ surname “Rosenback,” rhyming it with smack. The lore around here states that Philip and Abraham pronounced it that way. Most everyone else, though, tends to rhyme …
Who’s this Buckaroo?
Or perhaps I should say “buckarü.”Answer to be posted soon. UPDATE: Marlene Dietrich. This undated photo resides in the Papers of Mercedes de Acosta here at the Rosenbach. Dietrich looks pretty young in this photo — it was probably taken before she moved to Hollywood in 1930. Given the effort she and Josef von Sternberg …
First Folio
Our Librarian, Elizabeth E. Fuller, recently wrote up these notes about the upcoming sale of one of the last Shakespeare First Folios left in private hands: [Note-the image here is of the Rosenbach’s copy of the third folio!] ************* Sotheby’s recently announced that it will offer a copy of Shakespeare’s First Folio at auction in …
Black and White
Truman Capote is in the air these days. (I really liked Philip Seymour Hoffman in Capote, though I do have a small gripe with the Academy giving Oscars to actors playing celebrities — e.g. Hoffman, Reese Witherspoon, Jamie Foxx, Cate Blanchett, etc. — but that’s another post on another blog.) Forty years ago this November …