Road Trip: Indiana Historical Society Allen Ottens Perhaps as you’re reading this piece, you can hear some familiar tune faintly in the background. Maybe it’s the beguiling strains of “Begin the Beguine” or the rousing “Blow, Gabriel, Blow.” Whichever it is, it’s likely coming from the Cole Porter Room in [...]
Quarantine: A Collector’s Story Stuart P. Embury, MD I’ve come to believe that the members of the Manuscript Society might have an advantage during these trying times. This hiatus has given collectors the opportunity to devote additional attention to their holdings. Just before the onset of the pandemic, I purchased [...]
Forging History: The Detection of Forged Historical Manuscripts From The Grolier Club: March 2021, New York The Grolier Club Library is pleased to announce the receipt of a major gift, the Collection on the Detection of Forged Handwriting, which is the most important and comprehensive collection on the [...]
Manuscript Society members are always looking for an item to complete a collection. A letter, an image, a photograph, it does not matter. What will be a fair price for the sought after piece? What about the provenance? Where can I find many different catalogs? It has always been a [...]
January 23rd - National Handwriting Day Page of Manuscript - In Search of Lost Time - Marcel Proust - 1913 To hand write a letter or send an email. Maybe a text. Perhaps a tweet. How do you stay in contact with your friends and family? The [...]
Anderson’s record of the 238 yellow fever patients admitted to Bellevue between August and October 1795; 137 of them died. (Alexander Anderson Papers / New-York Historical Society Library) Anderson's Diary Highlights Epidemic "Word of the disease in New York City came “from every quarter.” The place was [...]
Letterlocking Letterlocking used complicated folds to seal correspondence. (Unlocking History Research Group Archive) What do Mary Queen of Scots, Galileo, Marie Antoinette and Niccolò Machiavelli have in common? All practiced letterlocking! Letterlocking used complicated folds to seal correspondence. Virtually hiding correspondence from prying eyes. Sometimes the recipient might [...]
Collecting Conversations: An Interview with William Fliss, Archivist of Special Collections and University Archives at Marquette University. Curator, J. R. R. Tolkien collection Kevin Segall William Fliss, Archivist of Special Collections and University Archives at Marquette University. Curator, J. R. R. Tolkien collection J.R.R. Tolkien Collection - Marquette [...]
The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens has acquired the personal papers of Thomas T. Eckert (1825–1910). Left: “…get hold of Edison & keep him,” urged a promoter of Thomas Edison’s quadruplex telegraph to Thomas Eckert, president of the Atlantic and Pacific Telegraph Co., in 1876. Thomas T. [...]
William Henry Dorsey William Henry Dorsey was an African American of means who lived in 19th-century Philadelphia. Like many others of his generations, he was bitten by the collecting and archiving bug. The son of Thomas Dorsey, an enslaved man who fled bondage in Maryland and secured his freedom in [...]