Posts by Juli McLoone

For the past two years, the Special Collections Library has celebrated Pi Day (3/14) by sharing pie recipes from the Janice Bluestein Longone Culinary Archive (JBLCA). This year, we bring you a pair of pies from The new cyclopaedia of domestic economy and practical housekeeper...(1872), edited by Elizabeth Fries Ellet.

Today we celebrate the final day of Picture Book Month and also the 349th birthday of Jonathan Swift, English satirist and poet, most famous for his authorship of Gulliver’s Travels. In honor of both, this post highlights two picture book editions for children from the Hubbard Collection of Imaginary Voyages.

Last Friday, I was privileged to welcome students from the College for Creative Studies in Detroit to the Special Collections Library. As part of a class on exploring the book, attendees were preparing for an assignment to create a one-of-a-kind artists’ book. The instructor had asked me to find examples of unusual artists’ books with interesting structures, offering me an opportunity to explore new dimensions of Special Collections’ artists’ book holdings.

First published in 1789, Gilbert White’s The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne describes the history and environment of the parish in eastern Hampshire where he lived for much of his life. The book offers gently reflective accounts of White's observations, structured as 110 letters to two friends - zoologist Thomas Pennant and amateur naturalist Daines Barrington. An immensely popular and influential work in the genre of nature writing, White's writings continue to inspire today.

The Special Collections Library is pleased to announce a new online exhibit: "Curiouser and Curiouser!": Exploring Wonderland with Alice. This exhibit features a selection of materials from the physical exhibit celebrating 150 years of Alice, which was on display in the 7th floor Exhibit Space of Hatcher Graduate Library, August 25, 2015 - December 17, 2015.

Shoes (and dancing shoes in particular) return again and again as a central motif of fairy tales - from the glass slipper that declares Cinderella to be the Prince’s ballroom crush to the red hot iron slippers in which Snow White’s evil stepmother is forced to dance till she dies. However, perhaps no fairy tale contains quite so many shoes as “The Twelve Dancing Princesses.”

The Janice Bluestein Longone Culinary Archive (JBLCA) at the University of Michigan Special Collections Library documents American culinary history, defined broadly to include both influences upon American foodways and the influence of American culinary practices elsewhere. The recent acquisition of a small cookbook collection formerly belonging to Colonel Karnig “Carl” Mahakian (1926-2015) contributes to JBLCA's strength in immigrant culinary traditions and charity cookbooks.

“Beauty and the Beast” is one of the most popular and frequently republished fairy tales. While it has roots and antecedents in animal groom folklore and classical mythology, such as the tale of Cupid and Psyche, the specific characters and narrative elements that compose the tale we know as “Beauty and the Beast” have their origin in the literary fairy tale “La Belle et la Běte” written in 1740 by Madame Gabrielle-Suzanne de Villeneuve.

The audience for children’s literature goes far beyond ages 2-12. The words and images of these books linger in our minds long after we’ve outgrown the suggested age ranges. Below are a few favorite children’s books from the staff of the Special Collections Library, featuring titles present in our Children’s Literature Collection. Celebrate Children’s Book Week with one of these suggestions, or share your own best-loved books in the comments!

The exhibit Shakespeare on Page and Stage: A Celebration (Audubon Room, January 11-April 27, 2016) showcases both the textual and performance history of Shakespeare’s plays. This post looks at a particularly dramatic instance of Shakespeare forgery in the late eighteenth century. William Henry Ireland, the son of publisher and Shakespeare collector Samuel Ireland. Samuel and William Henry Ireland had a relationship that was strained at best, and as a young man, William Henry wished desperately to please and impress the elder Ireland. And indeed Samuel Ireland was very pleased when his son began bringing home manuscript material in Shakespeare’s hand, supposedly from the home of a gentleman who wished to remain anonymous.