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A few months ago we received a generous gift of 191 books, mainly first, sometimes first American, editions of Rudyard Kipling, works about him, and a few books with beautiful fore-edge paintings. Mrs. Helen Jenkins, the donor of the collection, has recently passed away, a few days shy of her 100th birthday. Born in Topeka, …
Happy Valentine's Day! Today we're taking a look at Emblems of Love by Philip Ayres, a book "dedicated to the ladys" in 1683. Ayres, a poet and translator, was a tutor to the Drake family and is known primarily in this century for his Lyrick Poems (1687). However, his Emblems of Love was a well-known …
Giovanni Boccaccio was born seven hundred years ago in Tuscany, Italy. Special Collections and Rare Books celebrates this important anniversary by displaying editions of Boccaccio’s work as well as that of influential contemporaries and predecessors. Boccaccio made an inauspicious start as the illegitimate son of Boccaccino di Chellino. He was adopted by his father, but …
My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save …
On October 28 in 312 A.D. Constantine defeated the superior forces of his rival Maxentius at the battle of Milvian Bridge. Maxentius’s forces attempted to retreat across the Tiber by way of the Milvian Bridge, but the bridge quickly became overcrowded. As Lactantius records in De Mortibus Persecutorum, or The Deaths of the Persecutors, "the …
Textus seque[n]tiaru[m] cu[m] optimo comme[n]to, was one of a few incunabula we acquired last year. Published in Cologne by Heinrich Quentell in 1496, the book is a collection of Sequences with extensive comments and explanations for students by a well known Nederlandish scholar and grammarian Hermann Torrentinus (ca.1450-1520) Liturgical Sequences were an integral part of …
Gregory the Great was consecrated to the papal office on this day in the year 590. He would have preferred to remain a monk. According to Gregory of Tours, “[h]e strove earnestly to avoid this high office for fear that a certain pride at attaining the honor might sweep him back into worldly vanities he …
A year after the child king, Edward VI, ascended to the British throne, the first Act of Uniformity was enacted in 1549. The Act established the Book of Common Prayer as the sole legal form of worship in England. Subsequent Acts of Uniformity in 1552 and 1559 adopted revisions of the Book of Common Prayer, …
July 4, 2012, will likely see many Americans partaking in backyard barbeques and enjoying fireworks displays. However, generations of earlier Americans celebrated Independence Day in a different way: with a sermon. On this day two hundred years ago, the young United States was preparing itself to go to war yet again with a world superpower, …
Snow White's been busy lately. This year alone she’s starring in two movies while also appearing in a television series. First published by Jacob and Wilhem Grimm as part of their Children’s and Household Tales (Kinder-und Hausmӓrchen), the brief story introduces all the familiar faces: Snow White, her evil stepmother, the huntsman, and the dwarves. …