April 3, 2014, Filed Under: Books + Manuscripts, Cataloging, Digital Collections, Research + TeachingCollection of diplomat’s seventeenth-century newsletters reveal insights into early English history and statecraft I must thank you for the chocolate and snuff you intend to send me, if it be perfumed with anything but orange or jessamin [jasmine] flowers, I had rather have plain, for I find all musk etc. hurts my head. William Bridgeman, Clerk to the English Secretary of State, London,… read more
February 3, 2014, Filed Under: Books + Manuscripts, Cataloging, Digital CollectionsLetter reveals lessons in seventeenth-century home economics in London According to Mary Evelyn, the wife of John Evelyn, a renowned English intellectual, diarist, and horticulturalist in the late seventeenth century, it cost £313 and 1 shilling to set up a proper upper-class household for eight people in London in 1675. In today’s dollars, the dishes, silver, glasses, linens, and… read more
November 8, 2013, Filed Under: Books + Manuscripts, Cataloging, Digital Collections, Research + TeachingNew inventory of manuscript collection reveals unprecedented level of detail for scholars of British history The Ransom Center recently published a new finding aid for one of its richest collections of early manuscripts: the Carl H. Pforzheimer collection of English manuscripts. The bulk of the manuscripts were acquired in 1986, along with 1,100 other rare early printed editions of English literature that form the Pforzheimer… read more
