Richard F. Thomas
George Martin Lane Professor of the Classics Catullus. Carmina Translated by Sir Richard Burton London, 1894 Sir Richard Burton’s verse translation of Catullus was issued privately in limited editions by Decadent publisher Leonard C. Smithers in 1894, four years after Burton’s death. Smithers printed Forewords by Burton, along with a
Josiah Blackmore
Nancy Clark Smith Professor of the Language and Literature of Portugal Gomes Eanes de Zurara Crónica da tomada de Ceuta Portugal, ca. 1475 Zurara was the official historian of Portugal until his death in 1474. He documented Portuguese explorations in Africa until approximately 1460, when Prince Henry “the Navigator” died.
Lawrence Buell
Powell M. Cabot Research Professor of American Literature Emeritus Christopher Pearse Cranch Emerson the Mystic Louisville, ca.1837-9 Among the American Transcendentalists, artist-poet Christopher Cranch had the greatest talent for caricature. This oft-reprinted cartoon of a famous/infamous Ralph Waldo Emerson passage (“I become a transparent eye-ball. I am nothing, I see all”)
Ann Blair
Carl H. Pforzheimer University Professor Writing tables with a Kalendar for xxiiii yeres London, 1581 People have been jotting down notes since the invention of writing, but we know little about this mundane activity because notes are so often treated as temporary. This unusual book was likely of use to
Stephanie Sandler
Ernest E. Monrad Professor, Slavic Languages & Literatures Elena Guro Osenniĭ son Saint Petersburg, 1912 Elena Guro published this slim volume in 1912, with her own delicate illustrations and an authorial inscription on the flyleaf giving herself a doubled name, Elena Guro and Eleonora von Notenberg. The dedication is to
Robin Bernstein
Professor of African and African American Studies and of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Ira Aldridge Letter to Danzig Theatre’s Director Groß-Glogau, 1851 A major idea in my course, “African American Theatre, Drama, and Performance,” is that nineteenth-century African American performers were cosmopolitan subjects who traveled the world. By working with
Philip M Sadler
F.W. Wright Senior Lecturer in the Department of Astronomy and Director, Science Education Department Logbook of the Canton New Bedford to Australia 1874-78 Navigation has been taught at Harvard since 1718, initially as a way to illustrate the mathematics of spherical geometry. Since then, the teaching of navigation has become
Peter Sacks
John P. Marquand Professor of English The Dramatic Works of William Shakspeare London, 1814-18 This book once rested in the “living hand” of Keats. That hand also underlined and annotated many of the tiny volume’s pages. The poet’s hand was thus not only on but in the book. Of all
Michael McCormick
Francis Goelet Professor of Medieval History John Wycliffe Sumula Sumularum Italy, ca. 1400-25 In 1991, this manuscript featured in the first graduate seminar on the auxiliary disciplines of medieval studies (heuristics, codicology, Latin palaeography, etc.) that I taught at Harvard. The students did an admirable job on this challenging palimpsest.
Marjorie Garber
William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of English and of Visual and Environmental Studies William Shakespeare The Tragedie of Hamlet Prince of Denmarke Weimar: The Cranach Press, 1930 Over the course of my career I have written books about many kinds of love, yet was unprepared for and surprised by a