The game is afoot to ferret out the realm of detective and spy literature at the Rosenbach. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to explore early mystery stories, examine an original cypher belonging to a female Civil War spy, and exercise your sleuthing skills to detect a forgery.
In June of 1816, Mary Godwin, Percy Shelley and Mary’s stepsister, Claire Clairmont joined Lord Byron and his doctor John Polidori at a rented villa on Lake Geneva. Eighteen-year-old Mary had eloped with the already married poet Percy the year before, and Byron had fled England in disgrace. Cold, stormy weather kept the young people cloistered for long nights of ghost stories and scientific speculation. From this alembic of romance, scandal, science, and horror, Mary dreamed up Frankenstein and Polidori began the first vampire story in English fiction. Explore the creation of these immortal monsters with first editions and manuscripts born by the shores of Lake Geneva at the Rosenbach’s Villa Diodati Hands-on Tour.
Mathematician and cleric Charles Lutwidge Dodgson published children’s books under the pen name Lewis Carroll. This tour will explore both the man and the author, drawing on letters from Dodgson to his publishers, original drawings by John Tenniel (the illustrator of the Alice books) photographs of children taken by Carroll, and, of course, copies of his books.
Shakespeare’s youthful narrative poems made his reputation as a writer; his sonnets continue to bewitch and bewilder readers, and the poems in his plays cast spells, calm seas, and unite lovers.
Event Phone: (215) 732-1600
From the writings of Abraham Lincoln, to the wartime letters of Col. Alexander Biddle of the 121st Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry, to a Confederate children’s textbook, this tour provides a glimpse into the lives and thoughts of those who shaped and survived America’s worst conflict.
Join us for this rare peek into some of the most personal and emotional writing in our collections. From the aching yearnings of poet John Keats to the dying wishes of a Civil War solider, the Rosenbach is home to a variety of love letters. Spend an hour getting up-close and personal with a variety of treasures, including correspondence from Marlene Dietrich to Mercedes De Acosta and handwritten pages from James Joyce’s Ulysses.
“Picturing Cervantes” explores the ways Don Quixote has been imagined and illustrated through the centuries, featuring remarkable drawings and prints by notable artists such as Gustave Doré and Honoré Daumier.
Event Phone: (215) 732-1600
Along with James Joyce’s handwritten manuscript of his modernist masterpiece Ulysses, we’ll also read and handle works by Bram Stoker, Oscar Wilde, and more! These Irish authors have connections and influences extending from Thomas Jefferson and Moby-Dick to the present day.
Explore the philosophy and history of some of the first books printed in the Hebrew language.
While Jews themselves were rare in the Americas in the 17th century, word of the possible re-appearance of the Lost Tribes of Israel in the New World spread through the printed word in texts published in London and the Continent during the middle of the century. This tour examines early printed books in English, Latin, Dutch, Hebrew, and Native American languages, but only curiosity is required to learn about them. This fascinating mix of books tell a story of cultural misunderstanding in an age of exploration and expansion.