Each year the Newspaper & Current Periodical Reading Room adds new items to our collections. That includes new-to-us items, which are often very old. Take a look at just a few of the new items that we added in the past year!
Newspapers
Boston News-Letter (Boston, MA), March 10-17, 1718. This rare issue is from the first continuously published American newspaper, which was founded in 1704.
Massachusetts Spy (Boston, MA), October 27 to 30, 1770. This is the first issue of the newspaper published by famed American printer Isaiah Thomas.
Tree of Liberty (Pittsburgh, PA), July 16, 1803. This issue contains reporting on the Louisiana Purchase as the news of the purchase first became known in the United States.
Southern Sentinel (Alexandria, LA), June 13, 1863. This issue of the Southern Sentinel, published in the war-torn South, was printed on the paper that was available at the time—wall paper. This will join the several other Civil War issues of Southern newspapers in our collections printed on wall paper. To see another example of this, take a look at this issue of the Vicksburg, MS, Daily Citizen.
Nachrichten Für Die Truppe, Europe, May 20, 1944. A single sheet newspaper issue published by the Psychological Warfare Division of the Allied forces and dropped by Allied aircraft over Germany from just weeks before D-Day.
ProQuest Historical Newspapers: Communist Historical Newspaper Collection. This collection of American and British communist newspapers covers from 1919 to 2013 and includes major titles such as the Daily Worker.
Comic Books
New Fun, April 1935. This over-sized comic book is considered one of the earliest comic book titles ever published.
Negro Romance, no. 2 (August 1950) and no. 3 (October 1950), pictured above. Negro Romance is known for featuring positive African American characters and stories rather than the stereotypes seen in other comics from that time. We are now the only public institution owning all four issues of this rare comic book.
Showcase, no. 4, October 1956. This comic book issue features the first Silver Age appearance of The Flash.
924 items donated from the 2019 SPX Annual Expo. Every year since 2011 the Library has acquired independent comics and cartoon art pieces at the annual Small Press Expo. To get a better picture of how this works, take a look at our previous blog post September = Comics.
So here’s to everything good that came from 2019. Happy New Year!