July 12, 2012, Filed Under: Books + ManuscriptsIn the Galleries: John Speed’s Postdeluvian Genealogy from the First Edition of the King James Bible Historian John Speed (1542–1629) worked with Hebrew scholar Hugh Broughton to create a 36-page genealogy to accompany the first printing of the King James Bible. The genealogy traced “euery family and tribe with the line of Our Sauior Jesus Christ obserued from Adam to the Blessed Virgin Mary.” Speed’s genealogy… read more
July 11, 2012, Filed Under: Books + Manuscripts, Exhibitions + EventsHelen Moore shares insight about Oxford and the making of the King James Bible In April, Helen Moore, Fellow and Tutor in English at Corpus Christi College, University of Oxford, spoke about the history of the King James translation at the Harry Ransom Center. The talk is now online on YouTube. Moore was lead curator of Manifold Greatness: Oxford and the Making of the… read more
June 28, 2012, Filed Under: AuthorsDriftwood in an archive Writer Jim Crace, author of Continent (1986), Arcadia (1992), Quarantine (1997), Being Dead (1999), and The Pesthouse (2007), speaks about ephermera in archives and the narratives and stories they provide. Crace elaborates about a piece of driftwood found in his archive that contains a note that was later incorporated into… read more
June 27, 2012, Filed Under: Exhibitions + Events, FilmIn the Galleries: Robert De Niro’s King James Version-inspired tattoos in "Cape Fear" The 1991 Martin Scorsese–directed thriller Cape Fear may seem an unlikely candidate for documenting the use and influence of the King James Bible, but its central character, Max Cady, as played by Robert De Niro, wielded biblical verses like weapons. This aspect of Cady was absent in both the original… read more
June 26, 2012, Filed Under: Exhibitions + Events, PhotographyFirst Photograph to travel to Europe for first time in 50 years The First Photograph will be loaned, along with 119 other images and photography-related items from the Harry Ransom Center’s Gernsheim collection, to the Reiss Englehorn Museum in Mannheim, Germany, for the exhibition “The Birth of Photography-Highlights of the Helmut Gernsheim Collection.” The exhibition runs from September 9 through January 6,… read more
June 22, 2012, Filed Under: Art, Books + ManuscriptsAlice in Burnt Orange: Salvador Dalí’s rendition of the Lewis Carroll classic at the Ransom Center Sarah Sussman is a graduate student in the English Department at The University of Texas at Austin. Though currently writing about nineteenth-century American Spiritualism, she is interested in Surrealist art, children’s literature, and British literature as well. Lewis Carroll’s 1865 novel that stretches the imagination and playfully defies logic has… read more