Tarot deck to accompany: Mathers, S. L. MacGregor, 1854-1918. Fortune-telling card; the Tarot, its occult signification, use in fortune-telling, and method of play. London: G. Redway, 1888.
One week from today, stop by Houghton for a popup exhibition showcasing our collection of eclipse material, then pick up a free pair of eclipse glasses (while supplies last) and head outside to see the real thing! https://libcal.library.harvard.edu/calendar/main/eclipse-exhibition
We’ve posted before about Jakob Böhme (1575-1624), a Lutheran theologian who experienced a direct revelation from God. Though most popular in Germany, this early 19th century printing shows that his books were also read in America. As with earlier editions, the work is heavily illustrated with symbols and diagrams to help the reader (or so it is hoped).
A true and perfect relation of that most sad and terrible earthquake, at Port-Royal in Jamaica, which happened on Tuesday the 7th. of June, 1692. London: Printed by R. Smith, 1692.
Theodore Roosevelt’s son Archie holding Josiah, a pet badger TR was given by a 12-year-old girl in Sharon Springs, Kansas while on a whistlestop tour of the Western U.S. Perhaps predictably, Josiah made for an increasingly bitey pet and eventually had to be relocated to the Bronx Zoo.
Wow, our 11th birthday! Hi, all, this is John Overholt, curator at Houghton Library, making a possibly unprecedented first-person post to reflect on this milestone.
No one has ever guessed correctly when I ask what our most-followed account on social media is–at more than 64,000 followers, it’s the Houghton Library Tumblr, which I started as a way to share the richness of our digitized collections. I was lucky when I started the site that Tumblr itself was very interested in promoting the work of special collections libraries, and helped us reach a wider audience than we could have otherwise.
Obviously Tumblr is a different site in 2024 than it was in 2013, but I’m proud of the record I’ve built up here over the years and I think our archive of more than 2300 posts makes a great introduction to Houghton’s collections and to the amazing things you can find in the world of rare book and manuscript libraries like ours.
