Anecdotes and other notes from the U-M Special Collections Research Center.
Beyond the Reading Room
Posts in Beyond the Reading Room
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This Wednesday's watermark feature: three hats motifs in watermarked papers from the Islamic Manuscripts Collection. Hats off to a year of monthly Watermark Wednesdays!
"The Light Princess" by Victorian writer George MacDonald plays on the many meanings of lightness and weightiness. A parody of Sleeping Beauty that delights in puns and word play, this 19th century literary fairy tale also has a more serious side as a reflection on the role of sorrow and grief in emotional maturity.
This Wednesday's watermark feature: lion motifs in watermarked papers from the Islamic Manuscripts Collection.
The University of Michigan presents a new online exhibit: The Reflection of Technology in Brewing. This exhibit focuses on the swift changes that the brewing industry underwent from the late eighteenth century to the mid-twentieth century.
'Sammelband' is a German term meaning 'anthology', which, in a general sense, bibliographers often employ to describe a bound volume that contains a group of separately published works. Our featured sammelband volume also includes handwritten inscriptions revealing a fascinating provenance story.
This Wednesday's watermark feature is a banner one: watermark in Isl. Ms. 410 (copied in 1487), another of the earliest manuscripts on watermarked paper in our Islamic Manuscripts Collection.
A 5+ year digitization project resulting in over 2,000 social protest images is now accessible to the world.
Each June, the nonprofit waterway protection and restoration group American Rivers sponsors National Rivers Month to spotlight the more than 250,000 rivers and streams throughout the U.S. Approaching the celebration from a literary angle, today's post shares 18th and 19th century descriptions of river journeys. Read on to see America’s rivers through the eyes of John Bartram, Henry David Thoreau, and Mark Twain.
Although largely forgotten today,The Water-Babies was once one of the most popular Victorian literary fairy tales. Charles Kingsley's imaginative tour de force leaps from realistic adventure, to fantastical exploration of aquatic biology, to an imaginary voyage in the tradition of Gulliver’s Travels.
This month’s recipe is a lemon cake from Culinary gems : a collection of choice recipes gathered with care from the treasures of culinary experts, published in Westfield, Massachusetts in 1884.
Lemon was an extremely common flavor for desserts and pastries in the 19th century -- almost the default neutral flavor, the way vanilla is now. Although vanilla was known in Europe as a flavoring by the 16th century (there’s an article on it in Diderot’s Encyclopédie of 1765) and a commercial extract was available in the US from at least 1847, it overtook lemon in cakes and pies only slowly
Lemon was an extremely common flavor for desserts and pastries in the 19th century -- almost the default neutral flavor, the way vanilla is now. Although vanilla was known in Europe as a flavoring by the 16th century (there’s an article on it in Diderot’s Encyclopédie of 1765) and a commercial extract was available in the US from at least 1847, it overtook lemon in cakes and pies only slowly