In 1822, Clement Clarke Moore penned the lines of the classic Christmas poem, “An Account of a Visit from St. Nicholas,” which begins with the immortal lines: “Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house, Not a creature was...
“I cannot live without books.” ~ Thomas Jefferson Thomas Jefferson’s Libraries is a project based at Monticello in Charlottesville, Virginia, to compile information about Jefferson’s libraries and his books. Jefferson read extensively and...
“The whole purpose of summer fishing, the Old Man said, is not to worry about catching fish, but just to get out of the house and set and think a little.” –Robert C. Ruark, The Old Man and the Boy Fishing, a popular American pastime, is...
Alexander Shaw, A catalogue of the different specimens of cloth collected in the three voyages of Captain Cook, to the southern hemisphere (London, 1787).Clements Library conservator Julie Fremuth has worked at the Library for 21 years. One of her favorite items from...
Regular contributor Emiko Hastings, Assistant Curator of Books, will be on vacation in Japan for the next two weeks. While American history (broadly defined) is the main focus of the Clements Library collections, researchers may be surprised to discover materials...
The Clements Library has a wealth of materials on African American history, documenting many aspects of slavery, the abolitionist movement, the Civil War, and beyond. Much research remains to be done with these materials, to more fully explore the African American...
While the origins of this obscure December 7 holiday are unclear, the tradition of having letter-writing days can be traced back to a time when handwritten letters were the most common form of communication. Before the invention of the telegraph, the typewriter, or...
In the Clements Library book collection, one small shelf of books has the call number “Curiosa.” Here may be found oddities that fit nowhere else in the collection, including these two hollowed-out books. The smaller one is the Oeuvres choisies de Bossuet,...
Dangerous Ideas: Controversial works from the William L. Clements Library In honor of Banned Books Week, this online exhibit from the William L. Clements Library presents twenty titles from the collection that have been the subject of controversy at different moments...
