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.
Though ice skating has been around for centuries, it only came into its current form and fashion in the mid-19th century and was still taking shape as a professional and competitive sport when Charlotte Oelschlägel (1898 - 1984) wrote The Hippodrome Skating Book in 1916.
Published in 1978, Paul Avrich’s "An American Anarchist: The Life of Voltairine de Cleyre" was the first substantial biography of Voltairine de Cleyre (1866-1912), an influential member of the American labor movement at the turn of the 20th century. Donated to the Library of Congress in 1986, the biography refers to de Cleyre as “one of the most interesting if neglected figures in the history of American radicalism.”
May Sarton (1912 –1995) was an important and prolific American author of poetry, literature, and journals. The Rare Book and Special Collections Division holds several of Sarton’s first editions in the Rare Book and Gene Berry and Jeffrey Campbell Collections.
