Joyceans around the world celebrate Bloomsday every year on June 16 because it is the single day on which James Joyce’s modernist novel Ulysses is set. Robert Motherwell, a prominent Abstract Expressionist artist, was a lifelong reader of Ulysses. His etchings illustrate The Arion Press’s monumental 1988 edition of the novel.
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In our current era, we tend to glorify the author and hold the original text in high esteem. We regard Shakespeare with particular reverence, and his text is held aloft as the sacrosanct work of genius. But this was not always the case. In fact, an altered edition of Romeo and Juliet was widely printed and preferred over Shakespeare’s authoritative text for over a century.
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One hundred years ago, on April 10, 1925, F. Scott Fitzgerald celebrated the publication of what he considered to be his greatest work of literature, The Great Gatsby. He had high hopes for the novel’s success in both sales and critical reception. “It will sell about 80,000 copies,” he supposed, “but I may be wrong.” In fact, he was wrong twice.
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For centuries, there have been unconventional beliefs about the shape of the Earth. This post provides a historical overview of alternative theories about the Earth’s form.
Read MoreWith the cherry blossoms’ ephemeral beauty immortalized in art and literature for centuries, there’s plenty of artworks to gaze upon on rainy days.
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The Rare Book and Special Collections Division will partner with the Library’s “By the People” crowdsource transcription project and Pennsylvania State University’s Douglass Day initiative to transcribe the contents of the African American Perspectives Collection. Read on to learn more about Douglass Day, transcription, and other efforts to preserve and share the collection assembled by Daniel Murray, a legendary figure in the history of the Library of Congress.
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2024 was another busy year for the Rare Book and Special Collections Division. As a way of reflecting on this past year and looking forward to the next, we are here sharing some new resources as well as past memories. Happy 2025!
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Sumerian literature, among the oldest written records in human history, recounts the stories of the Anunnaki gods and the origins of humanity. These ancient texts hint at a possible connection between humanity and extraterrestrial beings. Legends from various ancient cultures describe anthropomorphic gods, including Oannes, a deity emerging from the sea to impart advanced knowledge that helped the Sumerians establish their civilization. Throughout history, humans have shared tales of divine beings who brought the knowledge necessary for creating a civilized world. These beings are often credited with extraordinary wisdom and abilities. Ancient peoples attributed the foundations of their civilizations to…
The post Linking Ancient Texts with UAPs Emerging from the Sea appeared first on Anomalien.com.
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This post features maps of the World’s Columbian Exposition that took place in 1893. Images of a guide map, souvenir maps, floor plans, and bird’s eye views are included in the post.
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This post covers the cultural geographic origins and spread of the gift giver figure through various maps.
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Mary Renault (pseudonym of Eileen Mary Challans) was a British lesbian writer best known for her widely read historical-fiction novels set in ancient Greece.
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This blog post examines the history of Marvel comic book characters Agatha Harkness and Wanda Maximoff and their relationship to the witches’ road featuring titles from the comic book collection at the Library of Congress
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Isaac Jogues and his companions are popularly known as the North American martyrs. Over a period of years, these eight Jesuits worked among the Hurons, bringing many into the Catholic faith. They labored in what would become the northeastern United States and eastern Canada.
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Andrew Holleran (pseud.) is an American novelist, essayist, and short story writer and a significant contributor to post-Stonewall literature. He was a member of the Violet Quill, a group of gay writers who assembled in the early 1980s to critique each other’s work and to develop strategies to overcome corporate publishers’ reluctance to publish gay-themed novels. The Rare Book and Special Collections Division collects the works of the Violet Quill writers, including Andrew Holleran, and holds the first editions of their works in the Gene Berry and Jeffrey Campbell Collection.
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Born in Harlem on August 2nd, 1924, novelist and essayist James Baldwin (1924 – 1987) is regarded as one of America’s greatest writers. At the time of his death on December 1st, 1987, Baldwin was working with sculptor and printmaker Leonard Baskin (1922–2000) of the Gehenna Press to publish a fine press edition of an unpublished work. Gypsy and Other Poems features six of Baldwin’s poems that reveal an intimate, introspective side of the writer.
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