Photochroms, published primarily from the 1890s to 1910s, are prints that were created by the Photoglob Company in Zürich, Switzerland, and the Detroit Publishing Company in Michigan. The richly colored images look like photographs but are actually ink-based photolithographs, usually 6.5 x 9 inches. You can learn more about them here.

The Library is looking toward the power of crowd-sourcing to help enhance our records about these images:

“Your addition of current place names is much appreciated! Some locations have changed names or even countries since 1900. And, the titles we had to work with from the photochrom publishers based in Detroit and Zurich tended to be English or German versions of the place names.”

(The included image, “Native girls, Marken Island, Holland,” from the Library’s Prints and Photographs Online Catalog and also online at Flickr.)

The Library’s Science, Technology and Business Division is an excellent addition to our growing social-media family.  The very name of the division should tell you that it is chock full of wonderful stories and discoveries.  (Not incidentally, they also have some of the most amazing curators and reference specialists around.)  I myself have cribbed from their Everyday Mysteries website for blog fodder.

Jennifer Harbster and Donna Scanlon will be guiding you through the wonders of their corner of the Library.  Both of them have already been contributing guest posts to this blog.  They’re calling the new blog “Inside Adams.”  I’ll let them explain their moniker.

“Inside Adams” represents another step forward in bringing our stories and collections to you in new ways, but it also comes along with some work behind the scenes that can now usher in additional blogs.  We now have an aggregation page that features our blogs in a single place, along with recent posts, most-commented posts, and a handy list of our social media sites.

Check it out and let us know what you think.

And congratulations to Jennifer, Donna, and everyone else at ST&B.  “It’s a blog!”

I was watching a new episode of History Detectives last night on PBS (one of the few shows to which I am hopelessly addicted). Tukufu Zuberi did a segment about a letter purportedly written by the father of John Wilkes Booth to President Andrew Jackson threatening to assassinate Old Hickory.

The piece turned up some interesting tidbits supporting the notion that at least thoughts of assassination ran in the Booth family, such as what appears to be a contemporaneous apology for the letter from Booth the elder to Jackson in a Philadelphia newspaper.

The Library of Congress in the past had done some pretty exhaustive work of which I was unaware that signals our letter’s authenticity. Quoting Barbara Bair of the Library’s Manuscript Division:

[A]ccording to research by an LC conservator who specializes in manuscripts [Mary Elizabeth (Betsy) Haude], and who has examined the letter, the paper used in the Junius Booth to Andrew Jackson letter of July 4, 1835, as evidenced by the watermarks (dove, and A KELTY), was that of the paper maker Anthony Kelty. He operated a paper mill from 1830-1840 on Buck Run, near Coatesville in East Fallowfield Township, Chester County, Pennsylvania. [The letter was dated July 4, 1835, and addressed from Philadelphia.]

One of the unsolved mysteries regarding the letter was why the word “anonymous” had been scrawled in blue on the letter’s docketing (an identifying inscription on the letter’s covering). Again, Bair quotes Library conservators:

Pinpointing the origin of the inscription of “anonymous” that was added in a different hand to the docketing/address portion of the document is difficult without scientific analysis. It is possible that the blue ink is made from Prussian Blue, often referred to as the first modern/synthetic/artificial pigment. It was in use from approximately 1774.

It’s also possible that the blue ink is made from an aniline dye. Aniline dyes were manufactured in the mid-to-late 19th century. Both indigo and Prussian blue were added to iron-gall ink. However the blue ink on the Junius Booth document does not exhibit the qualities of iron-gall ink. And it is quite vivid in color. Aniline dye-based inks came into use after the 1850s. This does not determine to any precise degree when the notation was written, but that it appears to be 19th century in origin, and most likely written after Jackson had died (which was in 1845).

So why did Booth write the letter? It has been well-established that Junius Booth, a renowned Shakespearean actor of his time, was a heavy drinker who was given to insane outbursts, even during his on-stage performances. For instance, Bair relates an account from the book “American Gothic: The Story of America’s Legendary Theatrical Family—Junius, Edwin, and John Wilkes Booth” by Gene Smith. As the story goes, the character played by Junius was about to kill the character played by his son Edwin when they were heckled by a drunk, to whom Junius, still in character, raged: “Beware. I am the headsman, I am the executioner!”

It’s unclear how President Jackson responded to the letter, especially given the published Booth apology and the fact that Booth and Jackson were actually friends. (The Booth letter states, “You know me! Look out!”) But it’s possible that the old general and hero of the War of 1812 held little fear of death at the hands of another: Earlier in 1835, when a man tried to shoot Jackson at the Capitol and his gun misfired, the president personally fended off the would-be assassin with his cane as observers merely stood agape.

The Library has made the Junius Booth letter available to historians for some time, but I’ve also included in this post links to high-resolution images of the letter and its docketing for any other “history detectives” out there.

And watch “History Detectives” on Aug. 17, when another piece featuring the Manuscript Division will air. I hope to write about it at the time.

One such person is Mark Dimunation, chief of Rare Books and Special Collections. He is the subject of a profile in “Fine Books and Collections.”

The article discusses the quest of Dimunation and his staff to rebuild Thomas Jefferson’s library, the nearly 6,500 volumes of which were the foundation for today’s Library of Congress. I posted a much more extensive account last year about this remarkable global treasure hunt.

We started with thousands of Bain news photos from the 1910s and color images from the 1930s and 1940s (a project of the Farm Security Administration and the Office of War Information). For Veterans Day — previously known as “Armistice Day” — we added some rare panoramas from World War I. More recently, we added some breathtaking “photochrom” travel views.

Now, in honor of Abraham Lincoln’s 200th birthday — and in advance of our blockbuster Lincoln exhibit (which opens to the public with special hours Feb. 12 from 5 to 9 p.m.) — our fabulous curators have uploaded a new set of 22 photos of Lincoln or related to our 16th president.

The set includes the earliest known photo of Lincoln (daguerreotype), which was taken in 1846 or 1847. There are other unique and iconic images of Lincoln, his family, and even his funeral procession.

More Lincoln imagery from the Library’s online collections can be found here.

John will be taking questions during an online chat tomorrow (Nov. 18, 2008) at the Post’s Web site starting at 11 a.m. EST. You can read the chat here after it gets underway or submit your questions in advance.

There is fund-raising, exhibit design, curatorial work, object selection, conservation, writing the label texts, brochure design, fabrication, mounting, installation … and several other steps that I’m undoubtedly forgetting.

On Feb. 12, we’re opening the major exhibition “With Malice Toward None,” celebrating the 200th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s birth, made possible through the generosity of Union Pacific Corporation.

Even though that’s more than three months away, a lot of those steps have already taken place.

Yesterday, I got a glimpse of just one of the stages in the process. Just hours after objects for the exhibit were delivered to the Conservation Division, I visited our science lab to get an idea of the kind of preparatory work that is done before they’re put on public display.

Conservators of all kinds will be giving the objects various degrees of TLC over the next several weeks. Some documents will be “bathed” or treated to reduce the acidity and slow the decomposition of the ink and paper. Others may be delicately mended. Some pages will be “desilked” — which reverses a preservation process done briefly around the turn of the 20th century whereby a think layer of silk was applied to documents — in favor of modern techniques.

I hope to be able to link to a little more in-depth commentary on this process soon. In the meantime, I snapped a couple of photos with my phone that I wanted to share, and I’ve linked in this post.

The first is a box holding the contents of Lincoln’s pockets on the night he was assassinated; the second is the seed-pearl and gold necklace and matching bracelets worn often by Mary Todd Lincoln. The objects came to the Library in the 1930s as a bequest from Lincoln’s granddaughter.

They have been on display at the Library before, but because of conservation requirements, they’re rarely seen by the public. Starting Feb. 12, you will get another such opportunity. Stay tuned for more!

The Division will be featuring several new acquisitions, a few of which I’ll describe after the jump.  Light refreshments will be served.

Starry Messenger

The first edition of Siderius Nuncius, Galileo’s Starry Messenger, was one of the top items on the Library of Congress’s desiderata list.  As fundamental as the Bay Psalm Book is to our American collection, Galileo’s study of the heavens was the key title missing from our holdings of works documenting the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century.  Siderius Nuncius is Galileo’s second important work.  In it Galileo borrowed from a Dutch discovery of using lenses to magnify objects, and created the first powerful telescope that he trained on the moon and the stars and then published his findings.  The results of his observations were monumental.  First, they demonstrated the importance of the new scientific instrument, the telescope.  Second, his observations of the moon revealed the spherical dimensions of the planet and its density not unlike the physical structure of the earth.  Classical astronomy described the moon as a crystalline sphere, without a core of matter.  Third, for the first time the Milky Way, visible to the naked eye, was described in detail and he included the discovery of numerous stars that were hidden in the dense mist of the constellation.  Fourth, with the use of his telescope, Galileo identified four new planets circling Jupiter, and he named them the Medicean stars, after his patrons, the Medici family of Florence.

Galilei, Galileo.
Sidereius Nuncius:
Venice, 1610

First Original Mexican Cookbook

This is a later, but still very early edition of Simon Blanquel’s important early Mexican cookbook, which was first printed in 1831 and stands as the first original Mexican cookbook printed in Mexico.  It stands as a significant work in the culinary history of Mexico as one of the first publications to recognize a national gastronomy in Mexico.  Its primacy was mirrored in its popularity; nine editions of the cookbook appeared between 1831 and 1893.  The present 1845 edition adds quite a few additional recipes.  It lists several hundred recipes for all manner of dishes: meats, moles, albóndigas, pasteries, vegetables, chocolate, candies (cajetas, dulces finos), jaleas, buñuelos, and more.  The lithographic plates depict various cuts of meat, how to prepare roast chicken, trout, and a fish called rombo.

[Blanquel, Simon].
Novisimo arte de cocina o escelente coleccion de las mejores receta.
Mexico: Imprenta á cargo de Manuel N. de la Vega, 1845.

Mark Twain and His Canadian Publishers

The Division’s collection of the works of Mark Twain is one of the hallmarks of the Library’s nineteenth-century holdings in American Literature.  Twain’s influence was vast, and recent scholarship has highlighted the fact that Twain held a presence in Canada as well.  Between 1870 and 1890, at least nineteen of Twain’s titles appeared in Canadian editions before, between or just after their appearance in great Britain and the United States.  They were published in at least twenty-three different imprints in at least sixty printings.

It is impossible now to determine the total number of copies sold.  Twain must have lost thousands of dollars in possible royalties, and a t least some of these must have crossed the border to cut into his American sales.  Shown here, in superb condition, are various Canadian printings of Old Times on the Mississippi (1876, 1878, and 1883), The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1878, 1895), Tramp Abroad (1880), Twain’s Library of Humor (1888), and Sketches (1880).

Jules Verne Freely Translated

According to Brian Taves, author of the Jules Verne Encyclopedia, “The Library of Congress holds the most comprehensive Verne Collection of any institution outside the writer’s native land.”  In an effort to complete our holdings, the Division has pursued various editions and states of Verne’s publications.  Many of the titles shown here are scarce or unusual in some degree.  The copy of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1873), for example, is the true first American edition and is one of only two known copies in salmon-colored cloth.

The publication of The Baltimore Gun Club (1874) underlines the competition for Verne’s work.  Soon after De la terre a la lune was translated from the French into From the Earth to the Moon, variant editions appeared.  Here this very scarce copy of The Baltimore Gun Club is listed as a work “freely translated”; competition was fierce enough to absorb this kind of poaching.  Similarly, the two volumes To the Sun? and Off On a Comet, originally published by the Seaside Library (also in the Division’s collections), appeared together in 1878 as a pirated edition.

The two-disc collectors’ edition and the Blu-Ray edition include a bonus feature titled “Inside the Library of Congress,” and I have to say that we’re very pleased with the outcome. We were told to expect a piece in the five-minute range; we got one that was nearly nine minutes long.

According to one review of the DVD extras (who knew there were such things?):

The Inside the Library of Congress featurette (8:41, 1.78:1 and 2.40:1, 1080p) is first a love letter to an impressive landmark. We’re given a guided tour of the library’s formidable collections. There are laboratories for preservation and authentication. The body of knowledge is nothing short of remarkable.

The featurette takes viewers on a tour of the Thomas Jefferson Building with sweeping shots that are seldom-seen. The crew shooting the piece last year set up a 28-foot-long “jib arm” to get some stunning views of the Great Hall and the Main Reading Room. (The tourists that day were especially curious about what was going on!)

There are also visits to curatorial and other divisions within the Library, with a focus on the plot of NT2 (such as our Lincoln materials), including Geography and Map, Prints and Photographs, Manuscript, Preservation, and the stacks.

As I often say, we hope it offers millions around the world the opportunity to learn about the “fact behind the fiction.”