Anecdotes and other notes from the U-M Special Collections Research Center.
Beyond the Reading Room
Posts in Beyond the Reading Room
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As part of the ongoing series of events commemorating the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death this term, join us tonight (March 15th) for a live performance from the School of Music, Theatre & Dance from 5:00-7:00pm in the Hatcher Gallery.
March 14th (3/14) is celebrated around the world as Pi Day because the Greek letter ㄫ or pi, which is used to represent the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter, rounds to approximately 3.14. By happy coincidence, Pi is a homophone of Pie, and so 3/14 is also the perfect opportunity to enjoy baking (and eating) sweet and savory circular pastries. Below we share three recipes from the 1866 edition of Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management.
We are very pleased to announce the recent acquisition of an exquisitely illuminated parchment manuscript written in the Southern Netherlands in the sixteenth century. The manuscript is a Lectionary, one of the liturgical books used for the so-called Divine Office of the Church.
As Black History Month comes to a close, we highlight Malinda Russell’s A Domestic Cook Book: Containing a Careful Selection of Useful Receipts for the Kitchen. Published in Paw Paw, Michigan in 1866, A Domestic Cook Book... is the oldest known cookbook authored by an African American, and the Janice Bluestein Longone Culinary Archive holds the only known copy. This past year, a digital facsimile of this important work was made available through Hathi Trust.
The late-Soviet-period author's appearance on campus and in our archives are explored in this guest blog post by Caitlin Moriarty, Special Collections Reader Services Assistant.
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. With this post, we focus in greater detail on Paul Robeson’s performance as Othello in Ellen Van Volkenburg and Maurice Browne’s 1930 London production at the Savoy Theater.
The Special Collections Library would like to wish Lydia Maria Child a happy 214th birthday! Join us in remembering this 19th-century American treasure whose words sought to enlighten and entertain.
An extraordinary project is currently taking shape at the Wolverine Press, the letterpress studio at the University of Michigan. Led by Rebecca Chung (UMSI) and Fritz Swanson (Wolverine Press), a team of U of M students is working on a handset edition based on the G gathering from the second quarto of Hamlet, published in 1604 and conventionally known as Q2. In this gathering you can read what is probably the most famous soliloquy Shakespeare ever wrote: “To be, or not to be". In brief, the students are recreating the old printing technique of setting the type as a compositor would have done it in the seventeenth century.
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 will be the first of a series exploring specific productions in greater detail than the limited physical space of an exhibition allows. Today, we share additional material from Ellen Van Volkenburg's early 20th century marionette production of A Midsummer Night's Dream.
We are pleased to announce the opening of a new exhibit from the Special Collections Library: Shakespeare on Page and Stage: A Celebration (Audubon Room, January 11-April 27, 2016). The exhibit is a historical journey through different versions of Shakespeare’s plays as they were edited for publication or interpreted for the stage. Starting with the Second Folio (1632), our display includes a selection of landmark editions by authors and scholars like John Dryden, Nicholas Rowe, Alexander Pope, Samuel Johnson, and Edmond Malone. It explores the staging and costuming of productions such as Charles Kean’s archaeologically-informed, elaborately-costumed 1856 production of The Winter’s Tale, and Maurice Browne-Ellen Van Volkenburg 1930 production of Othello, casting Paul Robeson as the first black actor to play Othello on the London stage in a century. It also includes an extraordinary multi-media feature in the form of a selection of video clips of famous film adaptation of Shakespeare's plays.