#newacquisition — Public Fediverse posts

A very charming 18th century Persian manuscript on the wonders of the natural world. We get lots of teaching requests for our Islamic manuscripts but relatively little in the collection is at all accessible if you don't read the language. #NewAcquisition

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We probably won’t get *every* 17th century book on comets before I retire, but I’m working on it. #NewAcquisition

At 8 feet I’m pretty sure this #NewAcquisition is the longest item in our extensive collection of English caricature. It’s made up of four separate sheets and you can see in the Yale copy they were assembled by purchasers in different arrangements. https://collections.library.yale.edu/catalog/33434235

Get ready for a lot of #NewAcquisition posts after my visit to the New York Book Fair last week!

I don’t know if I could name another 16th century English madrigal, but I thought we should have “April is in my mistress’s face” even if it’s a bit of a janky copy.

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Just ordered this "Oops, forgot to re-ink the type" for our collection of printing accidents and errors. #NewAcquisition

An 18th century sheet of short prayers for the souls of the dead, intended to be cut into slips and randomly drawn out of a box. "For the Souls to whom you are strangely enraptured", "For the Souls whose pain you bear", ‘For the Souls of all Good Deeds", "For the Souls who loved you and those you loved in this life and no longer remember." #NewAcquisition

Sermon delivered on Dec. 23, 1754, at the dedication of the Convento de la Enseñanza, the first public school
for women in Mexico City. #NewAcquisition

A 1703 poem from a young Josiah Cotton, scion of one of the most important Puritan families in Massachusetts (and cousin of Cotton Mather), to one Deborah Browne. #NewAcquisition

My Fashion Police exhibition has closed but I’m still acquiring works from men who are mad about women’s clothing. This Italian priest is particularly concerned about bare arms and shoulders. #NewAcquisition

1794 rebus maps of England and France with a decidedly contrasting view of current events in each. (I hope someday to do an exhibition on radicalism and revolution in 1790s Britain and France, so I'm always on the lookout for stuff like this.) #NewAcquisition

A tiny relic of a venerated 18th century abbess—a little piece of her habit preserved in a folded printed sheet less than 10cm square. #NewAcquisition

I have been working for years to fill out our collection of the Minerva Press, a late 18th/early 19th century publisher that specialized in popular fiction by and for women. I love that this novel has a bit of self-referential product placement, describing a circulating library (a for-profit lending library) full of Minerva Press books. #NewAcquisition

Did I buy this to complement the American cookbook collection at the Schlesinger Library and because it has a contemporary female ownership inscription? Yes.

Did I buy it because it calls people who work in food preparation the "Officers of the Mouth"? Also yes.
#NewAcquisition

I'm always on the lookout for books with features I've never seen before, and this is a 17th century day by day account of a siege of Copenhagen with little iconic images of typical occurrences during the siege that you could cut out of larger sheets at the back and paste in next to the relevant entries. It would have been much easier and cheaper to print that way than the printer embedding each image on its page. #newacquisition

This is a sheet of unused turnpike tickets from an 18th century English toll road. Something like this is so completely unremarkable in its time that it almost never survives, but in this case it was used as wastepaper to fill out a binding, and then recently discovered inside. #NewAcquisition

I was really taken with this gift binding, likely a present from one woman to another, lettered "Take and Read this Out of Friendship for Me". #NewAcquisition

I bought a new shirt. Do you like it?

#FreeTime #NewAcquisition

I bought a new shirt. Do you like it?

#FreeTime #NewAcquisition

I just bought our second copy of a not very interesting devotional book, because it shows something that is interesting. It was a presentation copy to a nobleman, so to remove any hint of vulgar commerce the publisher pasted a slip over the price on the title page and then stamped a row of ornaments to disguise it further.
#NewAcquisition

One of the rarest works by the transgender pioneer the Chevaliere d'Eon, shortly after negotiating a return to France from exile on the condition that she be able to live openly as a woman.

It's a sign of the times that the bookseller said he was pleased to hear that I was still interested in acquiring books about her despite the current political climate.

#NewAcquisition

One of the earliest Dutch accounts of Guyana and Suriname, with a real grabber of a frontispiece. #NewAcquisition

A German translation of an Anne Radcliffe gothic novel, with some lively pastepaper endsheets.
#NewAcquisition #NewAcq

A #NewAcquisition for my 2028 exhibition "Beach Reads: The Literature of Shipwreck", a Dutch "Robinsonade" from the popular 18th century genre of works inspired by Robinson Crusoe.

This 3-volume English novel was thought to survive only in a German translation and a single known copy of v.1. Nine years ago I acquired the translation and I just now got the full three volume set. Houghton is now the undisputed world center for Man of Honour studies. (Hopefully someone cares, it is by all accounts terrible, but i can't resist a lost book.) #NewAcquisition #RareBooks #Libraries

Take a video tour of a cool #NewAcquisition with my colleague Kelly Rene Bullard. Kami no Tabi (The Journey of Paper) is a beautifully illustrated guide to Japanese papermaking, complete with an array of sample sheets. https://youtu.be/sy01BfcMwTQ?feature=shared

Library catalogue of a learned 18th century French noblewoman, married to two different Marquises. Plus an interesting note from the printer explaining a gap in the pagination.
#NewAcq #NewAcquisition

Ah, now I remember--this is for an exhibition on books of trades we're planning for 2027. This is a satirical print about corruption in the trades depicted; according to the bookseller's description "the tailor keeps trimmings of fine cloth for himself, the weaver siphons off yarn and replaces it with its weight in glue and starch, the miller takes the best grain home with him, and the sergeant gets his way through artifice and flattery."
#NewAcq #NewAcquisition

An extensive collection of letters, some enciphered and decoded, written home by the Florentine ambassador to the court of Henry VIII. #NewAcquisition #NewAcq

A rare publication of short essays and poems by Harvard students, making it the first poetry anthology published in the (future) U.S.
#NewAcquisition #NewAcq

Just a few months after becoming the first woman to earn a scientific doctorate, Laura Bassi proudly titles herself “Dottrice” above her contribution to a small 1732 volume of poetry.
#NewAcquisition #NewAcq

Sometimes I post about #NewAcquisition-s but today I'm recording a video about our oldest acquisition. The Christian Warfare by John Downame is believed to be the only book from John Harvard's library that survived a 1764 fire that almost wiped out the Harvard College Library (because it was checked out at the time). https://id.lib.harvard.edu/alma/990083093800203941/catalog

A rare print of a fencing match between the Chevalier de Saint-George (left), the son of a French Caribbean plantation owner and a woman he enslaved, and the transgender pioneer the Chevaliere d'Eon. I'm sure the exhibition was presented as a curiosity to the spectators, but I think they both look pretty cool. From the collection of the late Ricky Jay.
#NewAcquisition #NewAcq

1796 decree by the Viceroy of Mexico on the penalties for public drunkenness: "Women who, forgetting the natural modesty of their sex, are found intoxicated under the stated conditions shall, on each occasion up to the third offense, serve as many days in prison as men must endure in public labor."

#NewAcquisition #NewAcq

A couple years ago I used a portrait of the Chevalier de St. George as the signature image for an exhibition called Face to Face: Portraits of People of Color Before Photography. https://storage.net-fs.com/hosting/6288278/35/

The son of a French plantation owner and a woman he enslaved, the Chevalier became a master fencer, a concert violinist, and a composer. We only had a b&w version at the time, but I just got the opportunity to acquire a hand-colored copy, and it’s really gorgeous. #NewAcq #NewAcquisition

A satire on gender roles, the frontispiece of "The Transformation of Woman into Man and Man into Woman" depicts a woman negotiating business affairs while her husband contemplates his reflection. The picture on the wall depicts a man and woman exchanging an axe for a distaff for spinning yarn.

#NewAcquisition #NewAcq

I can't tell what the original inquiry to the British Museum was, but keeping this letter in a copy of the book feels a little like the owner was gloating.
#NewAcquisition #NewAcq

An 18th century manuscript of French drinking songs. The handwriting is quite tidy, so presumably that part was done before the drinking.
#NewAcquisition #NewAcq

The accountbook of perhaps the greatest observational astronomer of the 18th century, Charles Messier, recording in a neat, tiny hand every financial transaction over a period of years, but with a wealth of intriguing biographical detail as well.
#NewAcq #NewAcquisition

A dainty and elegant little manuscript recording someone’s collection of more than 300 French plays.
#NewAcquisition #NewAcq

Another funeral item, with an illustration so big they had to awkwardly stock two plates together to print it. #NewAcquisition #NewAcq

A really striking full-sheet poster announcing the 1779 funeral of one Marie-Therese Mimerel. I’m always interested in the kind of things that were common at the time but rarely preserved, and I’ve never seen anything quite like this.
#NewAcquisition #NewAcq

A 1648 bibliography of works on the Virgin Mary, with a delightful frontispiece depicting authors offering their works to her. (I’m thinking about a possible future exhibition on books depicted within books, and this would be perfect.) #newacquisition #newacq

(Last one) The portrait on the left was commissioned for the 1772 collected works of the poet Sara Van der Will, but her bare head and plunging neckline were considered so scandalous that she had to commission a new more modest portrait and ask owners to swap it into their copies instead. #newacquisition #newacq

A 1781 science textbook for women, with an illustration of some impressive multitasking—a woman breastfeeds one child while teaching others. #newacquisition #newacq

An engraving commemorating the 13th century defense of Zurich by the town’s women disguised in armor, convincing the besieging army that it was too well defended to conquer. #newacquisition #newacq

A 1747 poem by an unidentified woman advocating for the creation of a university for women in Prussia. #newacquisition #newacq

A rare Dutch novel about a crossdressing female highwayman who disappointingly repents of her life of crime at the end and retires to a convent. #newacquisition #newacq

I just bought a bunch of items from a collection of early modern women’s history, and I’ll post a few as I get them processed for payment. This is a book of portraits of great women of history. #newacquisition #newacq