The Newberry

The Edward E. Ayer Digital Collection

Happy Birthday, Ernest Hemingway!

The Newberry would like to celebrate Ernest Hemingway’s birthday by showcasing this splendid letter, sent by Hemingway to Sherwood Anderson, author of Winesburg, Ohio. In it, Hemingway discusses the literary life of Paris in 1922. He describes his friendship with Gertrude Stein, talks about Joyce’s “most god-damn wonderful book” (Ulysses), and boxes with Ezra Pound, who, he claims, “has the general grace of the crayfish or crawfish.” After complimenting Anderson on his book and complaining about the newspaper business, Hemingway ends his letter with a humorous postscript: “I wrote some pretty good poems lately in Rhyme. [Handwritten]: We love Gertrude Stein.”

It’s back! The Newberry Library Book Fair, Chicago’s most popular used book binge, begins this Thursday, July 23rd, and ends this Sunday, July 26th. We at the Newberry know that there is no such thing as “too many books,” so we’ll have approximately 120,000 used books for sale, most of which will be priced at $2 or under! Can you find a better deal elsewhere? We thought not.

Ephemera Phriday in...Trade Card Tramp

From the 1870s on, trade cards (the ancestors of the modern-day “trading card”) could be found in the packaging of many mass-produced products. Whether they were included in packs of cigarettes, packs of bubble-gum, or chocolate bars (as the trade card above was), trade cards were popular collectible items, and efficient forms of advertising.

The trade card above is one in a series of 120 manufactured for the Canadian dairy/candy company Neilson’s. They portray "Movie Actors and Actresses in their famous characters," as the card proudly proclaims. This card features Charlie Chaplin as the two main characters of the film The Idle Class. One is an upscale businessman, and the other is his famous Tramp, for whom, over the course of the film, the businessman is often confused (hilarity ensues!).

Happy Bastille Day, everyone!

The Bastille was constructed on the walls surrounding the city of Paris in 1357, and served as a fortress during the Hundred Years' War between England and France. It was occasionally used as a prison during the war, and became an official state prison in 1417. The Bastille functioned as both a royal fortress and a state prison for the next two centuries, but, due to rapid city expansion in the 17th century, its position as a fortress became unnecessary, and it served as a prison from then on.

Over time, the Bastille became a symbol of monarchical cruelty. On July 14th, 1789, with revolutionary sentiments already proliferating throughout the capitol, some 900 Parisians stormed and captured the Bastille, freeing the eight prisoners inside. Though this was a much smaller number of prisoners than expected, the storming of the Bastille nevertheless managed to capture the mind of the nation. The date now marks the beginning of the French Revolution, and the beginning of France as a new nation freed from monarchical rule.

The above depiction of the storming of the Bastille comes from the Étrennes Nationales, dédiées à la liberté française..., an illustrated almanac which depicts and celebrates important scenes from the French Revolution. The book itself was produced less than a year after the storming of the Bastille, and provides a fascinating view of those famous events.

Happy Fourth of July, everyone!

The Newberry would like to add to your weekend festivities by showcasing a splendid item from our collection, and in so doing, transport you back to a time before hot dogs, before soda, before public fireworks displays, before the American bicentennial, even before the Declaration of Independence itself. “A Plan for the Town and Harbour of Boston” is a fascinating map which depicts not only the Massachusetts state capital (or commonwealth capital, as it were) and its surrounding area, but the battles of Lexington and Concord. Tiny soldiers represent different groups of militia and different moments during the battles; and elsewhere on the map, different American military encampments and forts are represented by small tents and cannons. As for the famous “shot heard round the world,” it is not called so on the map (the phrase would not be used until Ralph Waldo Emerson coined it in 1837), but the “Bridge where the attack began” is clearly marked, and is surrounded by tiny, musket-firing soldiers.

This map was produced only eight months after the battles of Lexington and Concord. It provides a fascinating contemporaneous depiction of those now legendary conflicts.

The sun is shining its splendid rays down on Washington Square Park, and our favorite patch of public greenery is filled with fast-moving, casually resting, and sometimes simply strolling people and pets. But these are not the only purveyors of the park across the street: birds, our feathered friends, have become increasingly aware of the sun and its tender warmth, and have once again made themselves at home in the trees, fountain, and flower-beds of the aforementioned park.

If you are at all interested in the lives, habits, and whereabouts of our avian acquaintances, then be sure to visit the Newberry Library, obtain a Reader's Card (click here for more information), and request our first edition of John James Audubon's octavo-format Birds of America (pictured above). A seven-volume masterpiece of ornithological observation and investigation, complete with 500 full-color illustrations, Birds of America is a marvelous read for anyone interested in our hollow-boned neighbors!

Christmas in...June?

That’s right! Today is the 145th anniversary of the US government’s decision to declare Christmas a federal holiday. Christmas’s road to federal holiday status was bumpy, however. During the Interregnum, the celebration of Christmas was banned by English Puritans, who considered the holiday a joint Catholic-pagan frivolity. With the return of the monarchy, Christmas regained some of its former esteem, but many Puritans still considered it a useless and unholy celebration. When those same Puritans immigrated to the American Colonies, they brought their distrust of Christmas along with them. And so things continued for many years, until Colonial Americans found a new reason to dislike Christmas: for being too English.

The general Christmas spirit was not revitalized until the mid-nineteenth century, when many of the modern-day Christmas rituals originated. This revitalization was due, in part, to the efforts of Charles Dickens, who also, it is alleged, helped create the myth of the “white Christmas.” The Christmas spirit was eventually brought to America, and in 1870 Ulysses S. Grant declared Christmas a federal holiday (in the District of Columbia...it would take another fifteen years before Christmas became a national federal holiday).

In remembrance of this historic occasion, the Newberry is proud to showcase “The Book of Christmas,” a “descriptive of the customs, ceremonies, traditions, superstitions, fun, feeling, and festivities of the Christmas season” from 1838.

Happy Birthday, José Rizal!

The Newberry is proud to celebrate the birthday of Philippine national hero José Rizal, whose prolific and masterful writing, including poems, essays, and the famous novels Noli Me Tángere and El Filibusterismo, exposed the injustice and cruelty of Spanish rule in the Philippines, and helped inspire the Philippine Revolution. Convicted as a revolutionary by the Spanish authorities, Rizal was sentenced to death, and was executed on Decembr 30, 1896. His legacy lives on, however, and his writing’s powerful grit and vigor still has the capacity to stir the hearts of its readers.