Tag: Unique at Penn
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Japanese Lucky Almanacs and Their Knockoffs
Earlier this year, the Penn Libraries began accessioning the collection of the late Reverend Shojo Honda (1929-2015), generously donated to the University of Pennsylvania by his son Tamon Honda. Rev. Honda’s collection is a mix of Japanese and English publications focusing largely on Shin Buddhism, but it also covers topics as diverse as Sanskrit language…
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July 5, 1776
While the Continental Congress gathered in Philadelphia 240 years ago to decide the future of the 13 colonies, ministers and officials in Lisbon several thousand miles away also met to discuss what to do about the rebellious colonists. Long allied with the British, worried about the example of a rebellious overseas colony, and hoping to…
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Japanese Naval Cruise Books and the Renshū Kantai
Some of the Penn Libraries’ unique Japanese holdings, like our set of Okinawan Bibles or our collection of early 20th century pulp historical fiction, are legacy items donated decades ago and just recently rediscovered. Others, like the corporate history resource Mieki (a magazine dedicated to a brand of industrial soy sauce additive), have been purchased…
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A passage from a lost play
[Ed. note: Today’s post is by Andrew S. Keener, a Ph.D. Candidate in the English Department at Northwestern University who recently spent time researching in our collections] “Doo Comedies like you wel?” asks a speaker on the first page of John Florio’s bilingual conversation guide First Fruits (1578). Such a question is hardly out of…
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Alexander Hamilton’s working papers
On Monday, Penn hosts Lin-Manuel Miranda who will be giving this year’s commencement address. His acclaimed musical retelling of Alexander Hamilton’s life has sparked enormous interest in the first Secretary of the Treasury. A few months ago, in reading through scholarship on our collections, I came across a 1941 article describing a set of bound…
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The Materiality of Reading: A Victorian Woman’s Commonplace Book
This little notebook, covered in marbled paper, was clearly well-used. It once belonged to a young woman named Adelaide H[oratia] E[lizabeth] Seymour and is now UPenn Ms. Codex 1757. While the notebook itself is common, its contents provide a fascinating look at Victorian reading practices, consisting of “Extracts from Novels etc.” which Adelaide read…
Unique at Penn 