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Posted by: Lewis Wyman
The process of designing and producing a government seal for the Department of Mindanao and Sulu in the Philippines illustrates how American officials incorporated symbols of U.S. power and prestige into Philippine governance without Filipino participation.
Posted in: International History, Letters, Library of Congress History
Posted by: Lewis Wyman
An 1876 letter from Melvil Dewey to Librarian of Congress Ainsworth Rand Spofford represents the beginnings of Dewey Decimal Classification being shared with the wider bibliographic world, showing the connection between the history of the Library of Congress and the history of American libraries.
Posted in: Letters, Library of Congress History, Staff Favorites
Posted by: Julie Miller
The Library of Congress recently inaugurated Arthur Sze as the twenty-fifth Poet Laureate of the United States. In the Manuscript Division, a small collection of manuscript poems from the Library’s first Consultant in Poetry, Joseph Auslander, is now available for research.
Posted in: Letters, Library of Congress History, Literature Culture & the Arts, Of Note
Posted by: Michelle Krowl
In an 1861 letter to her mother, sixteen-year-old Louisa Russell recounted a Thanksgiving feast that battled against her "considerably tight" clothing.
Posted by: Josh Levy
An adorable kitten in a boot, found on the corporate stationery of a Boston-based shoe manufacturer, reveals the changing culture of American cities in the late nineteenth century.
Posted by: Julie Miller
The Library of Congress has just received a group of thirteen letters, mostly from Henry Clay to William Harris Crawford, six of which are unpublished. These document the work of the American commissioners who negotiated the Treaty of Ghent, which ended the War of 1812, and the subsequent commercial treaty signed with Britain.
Posted in: Early America, International History, Law, Letters, Politics, War and Society
Posted by: Rachel McNellis
While on board a passenger ship anchored in Charleston Harbor on April 12, 1861, Confederate surgeon Dr. Edward S. Aldrich witnessed the Battle of Fort Sumter and encountered the USRC Harriet Lane. His personal account is detailed in a family letter in the Manuscript Division’s Miscellaneous Manuscripts Collection.
Posted in: Civil War, Letters, Of Note, War and Society
Posted by: Lewis Wyman
In 1972, at the end of her life, British mystery novelist Agatha Christie wrote two letters to an American teenager. In them, she shares insight into her philosophy on both writing and crime (fiction).
Posted in: Letters, Literature Culture & the Arts, Of Note
Posted by: Julie Miller
In letters to her sister, Margaret Hunter Hall (1799-1876), wife of the popular British travel author Basil Hall (1788-1844), recorded her impressions of the United States during a trip the couple took in 1827-1828. These are available for research in the Margaret Hunter Hall Papers in the Library of Congress Manuscript Division.
Posted in: Early America, International History, Letters