Tucked into this copy of American Cookery (1796), often cited as the first American cookbook, is an unexpected and rather scandalous insert. Labeled simply “ADVERTISEMENT,” this errata sheet lays bare a bitter dispute between the book’s author, Amelia Simmons, and the person hired to help prepare her manuscript for print. An errata sheet usually offered …
Because only a few paper mills were established in Colonial America between 1690 and the Revolution, the growing American print industry was largely dependent on an imported supply of paper. In the 1760s, Britain exploited this vulnerability by placing taxes on paper, sparking tensions that would lead to Revolution.
Monty Python's Rabbit of Caerbannog is not the only killer bunny. The Rare Book and Special Collections Division has a fifteenth-century Birgittine manuscript from Mariënwater that contains a variation on this visual tradition.
In 1901, on a journey to reach the South Pole, the Discovery Expedition joined together to establish the first Antarctic journal. With illustrations, poetry, and field reports written by sailors and officers alike, the journal provided the crew with a creative outlet over the long polar winter. Six years later, members of that same crew embarked on a new expedition and set out to establish a floating print shop to create the first book ever published in Antarctica known as the Aurora Australis.
As our nation prepares to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States, the Library of Congress is producing a series of short films that present items from our collections related to American history and culture. Check out the latest films in the series!
As students and teachers across the country begin a new school year, the Rare Book Classroom invites K-12 and university-level classes to explore the Library of Congress’s materials both on-site and remotely.
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.
In another installment in Bibliomania's series on how books were made in the 15th-18th centuries, this post describes the processes of making woodcut illustrations, copperplate engravings, and etchings.
In 1540, humanist polymath, mathematician, astronomer, and cartographer, professor, and printer, Peter Apian (1495-1552) published one of the most lavishly illustrated scientific books ever printed. Dedicated to German Emperor Charles V and Ferdinand I, King of Bohemia, the Astronomicum Caesareum (Imperial Astronomy) contains 21 volvelles and 58 hand-colored woodcuts that involve some of the most spectacular dragons in the Rare Book and Special Collections Division.
