I’m happy to say that we had a successful Open House last Friday.  Some forty people visited the Watkinson between 10am and 2pm, including Board members, faculty, students, and interested “townies.”  The day also yielded two volunteers which will soon be working on a digitization project, and two gifts to the collection. 

The first is Dove at the Windows: Last Letters of Four Quaker Martyrs (Penmaen Press, Lincoln, MA, 1973). With a foreword by George Selleck & five woodcuts by Michael McCurdy, this is a fine press book limited to 200 numbered copies (this is number 199) and signed by McCurdy. It was printed by hand in Palatino on Nideggen paper from Germany, and reprints the surviving letters written by four American Quakers who were put to death in Boston between 1659 and 1661.  The Watkinson does have another copy (number 62), but in teaching about letterpress and bibliography it is often good to have two copies of a hand-made work to use for comparison.

The other gift is related to our wonderful collection of works published by the firm Roberts Brothers, of Boston.  

This is a letter to the publishers which apparently came with a manuscript of a novel titled “In the heart of the Rockies,” by an A. M. Barbour.  There is a note on the bottom of this query letter–the manuscript was apparently returned by express, because it was “full of slang talk by miners.”  One really wished to have that manuscript now!  Interestingly, a novel with the same title by the famous G. A. Henty was published two years before (1894) by Scribners in New York.  This letter will join our manuscript collection on the Roberts Brothers, described here:

 http://library.trincoll.edu/research/watk/manuscripts/RobertsBrothersCollectionInventory.htm

Tags: Events, New Acquisition