If you’re a poetry fan, you’ll want to stop by Special Collections in March and April to view our new lobby exhibits! This month, we’re displaying “Songs and Flowers of the Wasatch,” a Woman’s History Month exhibit which features lyrics and poems by 19th century Utah women. And next month — National Poetry Month, of …
New Year’s Day marked the anniversary of the birth of Anglo-Irish author Maria Edgeworth (1767 or 1768-1849). Edgeworth was one of the most prolific and successful novelists of the early 19th century. Edgeworth’s earliest publications were children’s stories and treatises on education, but in 1800, she burst on the scene as a novelist with Castle …
Special Collections has recently acquired copies of several important 19th and early 20th century anthologies of American poetry and literary criticism. These are wonderful resources for students of American poetry, providing information about literary reception and canon formation in the 19th century as well as publishing the work of many long-forgotten poets of the period. …
2016 kicks off a four-year commemoration of the life and works of siblings Charlotte (1816-1855), Branwell (1817-1848), Emily (1818-1848) and Anne Brontë (1820-1849). During the month of May, Special Collections will exhibit first editions of the Brontë sisters’ poems and novels. The exhibit will also examine how the Brontë family was memorialized in the 19th …
Two of Special Collections’ newest additions in the realm of rare literature are groundbreaking mystery novels, one British, the other American. Fergus Hume’s The Mystery of a Hansom Cab (Victorian Collection PR 4809 .H87 M8 1887b) was the best-selling mystery novel of its day. Hume self-published the novel in 1886 while working as a law …
A new exhibit to celebrate Women’s History Month is up in Special Collections’ lobby. It focuses on women’s spirituality throughout history and includes works by Saint Teresa of Avila, who was born 500 years ago this month. Teresa was a Spanish Carmelite nun who is remembered for her reform efforts within the order and the …
March is Women’s History Month, so this month’s post looks at Victorian notions of women’s education and domesticity. The Women of England, their Social Duties and Domestic Habits was an influential conduct book for women published early in the Victorian period (1839). The author, Sarah Stickney Ellis, was the wife of a Congregationalist minister and …
August marks the 150th anniversary of the first appearance of Elizabeth Gaskell’s beloved novel Wives and Daughters. Gaskell published the novel serially in the beginning in the August 1864 issue of the literary magazine The Cornhill, accompanied by illustrations by George du Maurier. Sadly, Gaskell died of a sudden heart attack in November 1865 before …
Part V: Mrs. Henry Wood (1817-1887) Friday, Jan. 17 marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of Victorian author Ellen Wood, who wrote as Mrs. Henry Wood. Her teen years were marred by a spinal curvature which kept her confined to her bed. At the age of 22, she married and moved to France, where …
Part IV: Clara Endicott Sears Clara Endicott Sears (1863-1960) was born 150 years ago this month. Sears was a wealthy Bostonian who authored several histories and a few long-forgotten novels. Today, she is best remembered as a preservationist and collector of American folk art and Native American art and artifacts. In 1910, Sears purchased the …