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Posted by: Mark Manivong
From 1944 to 1972, American author Esther Averill wrote and illustrated a series of 13 children’s books featuring a small and shy cat named Jenny Linsky who lives in New York City with her sea-captain companion. The series was loved by millions of American children and became Averill’s most popular children’s books.
Posted in: 20th Century, Cats, Children's Literature
Posted by: Patrick Hastings
Although T.S. Eliot was never a full-fledged member of the Bloomsbury Group, he developed relationships with many of its members, including Virginia and Leonard Woolf. In fact, the Woolfs published many of Eliot’s most important works on the small press they operated out of their kitchen.
Posted in: 20th Century, Fine Press, Literature, Poetry, Publishing, type
Posted by: Patrick Hastings
1922 was a pivotal year in the modernist literary movement, highlighted by the first edition publications of both James Joyce’s Ulysses and T.S. Eliot’s groundbreaking poem “The Waste Land.” In Eliot’s negotiations over publication rights to the poem, he utilized and tested an emerging network of modernist institutions.
Posted in: 20th Century, History of the Book, Literature, Poetry, Publishing
![Williams, Jonathan. Ruff, David, Metal-engraver. Garbage litters the iron face of the sun's child. Jargon 1. [Jonathan Williams], [San Francisco], 1951](https://blogs.loc.gov/bibliomania/files/2025/07/mm-jargon-001-01a.jpg)
Posted by: Mark Manivong
The Jargon Society released its first publication numbered Jargon 1 in 1951, “Garbage Litters the Iron Face of the Sun’s Child,” a folded pamphlet with poetry by Jonathan Williams and an etching by David Ruff. Founded that same year by Williams and Ruff, the Jargon Society would go on to publish 115 titles, mostly by up-and-coming writers and photographers.
Posted in: 20th Century, Appalachia, Contemporary Book Arts, LGBTQIA+, Poetry, Publishing, Uncategorized
Posted by: Patrick Hastings
As we prepare to celebrate the United States' 250th birthday on July 4, 2026, the Rare Book and Special Collections Division is producing a series of short films that highlight items related to American history and culture with particular focus on the Founding era.
Posted in: 17th Century, 18th Century, 19th Century, 20th Century, African American Poetry, American History, Children's Literature, Classics, Education, Education History, Education Outreach, Literature, Women's Stories
Posted by: Patrick Hastings
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.
Posted in: 20th Century, Famous Printers, Fine Press, Fine Prints, Illustrated Book, Literature
Posted by: Patrick Hastings
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.
Posted in: 20th Century, Education Outreach, Literature, Uncategorized
Posted by: Patrick Hastings
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.
Posted in: 19th Century, 20th Century, African American Literature, American History, Education Outreach, News and Events
Posted by: Amanda Zimmerman
In creating Consider the Consequences! authors Doris Webster (1885-1967) and Mary Alden Hopkins (1876-1960) were toying with a new idea: write a book that provided readers with narrative options. The result was the first choice-based novel ever printed as well as the precursor to the Choose Your Own Adventure book series that would become popular later in the 20th century.
Posted in: 20th Century, Publishing, Sports and Games, Women in Book History, Women's Stories