English poet John Keats published his famous long poem Endymion in the spring of 1818. The first literary reviewers hated it, but over the centuries, the poem and poet’s legacy has grown and it’s now a staple of English poetry anthologies. Even if you’ve never read Endymion, you probably know its first line: “A thing …
A collection of 18th century editions of French poetry and drama has recently been added to Special Collections. From major authors like Voltaire and Molière to collections of obscure playwrights, there are plenty of resources now available for scholars of French literature. Books from this collection can be found in the library catalog by searching …
Special Collections’ new exhibit for February celebrates Black History Month by featuring items by and related to figures who led and inspired the Civil Rights Movement, from Langston Hughes to Muhammad Ali. Fighting Back: Resistance in the American Civil Rights Movement is on display now in our reference area through February 28, 2018. The exhibit was …
Mary Shelley’s famous tale of horror, Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus, made its first appearance in print on Jan. 1, 1818. The novel gained notoriety almost immediately as another entry in the wildly popular genre of Gothic fiction, and has stood the test of time as a literary classic and one of the first pieces …
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s final collection of Sherlock Holmes stories turns a century old this week! Published 22 October 1917, His Last Bow: Some Reminiscences of Sherlock Holmes includes stories which appeared in The Strand magazine in the first decade of the 20th century, including “The Adventure of the Cardboard Box” and “The Disappearance of …
A PhD candidate, Zachary Turpin, made headlines in 2016 and again this year when he announced the discovery of two long-forgotten works by Walt Whitman: a series of newspaper articles entitled “Manly Health and Training” and a short novel, The Life and Adventures of Jack Engle: an Auto-Biography. Both texts were recently published in the …
Wordsworth’s poetry was rarely illustrated during his lifetime, but after his death, publishers began issuing collections of his poems accompanied by illustration. Some of Great Britain’s top painters and designers, like Albert Henry Warren, Miles Birket Foster and John McWhirter, provided illustrations for these deluxe editions. Here is a very brief sampling of illustrated Wordsworth …
Special Collections’ newest major exhibit, Welcome to Our Charity Bazaar, features an interesting subgenre of Victorian literature: poems, stories, and books produced for sale at fundraising fairs throughout the 19th century in Great Britain and the United States. Many famous authors of the period contributed pieces which were printed either as standalone items or anthologized …
This week marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of British illustrator John Leech (Aug. 29, 1817). As a teenager, Leech studied medicine, but when his father’s business failed, the young man turned to his first love – drawing – to help support his family. Leech’s first success was producing humorous lithographs in the 1830s. …
The Victorian period saw a huge growth in literacy in the British Isles. In 1841, around 2/3 of adult men were literate and 1/2 of adult women were literate. By the end of the century, literacy was almost universal, with 97% of all adults able to read. As the lower classes joined the ranks of …