Browse Items (6580 total)

If a picture is worth a thousand words, a movable is worth so much more. Pull the lever on this card to have the scientist scrub the kidney. This oral medication, besides treating urinary tract infections, also claims to treat rheumatism, gout,…

Dozens of magazine titles were sent to troops overseas. In this photograph, a GI takes a break from his work and enjoys a full-sized edition of Esquire. The Army regularly polled troops to determine what magazines were the most popular. Based on…

Wilkie was known for highly detailed and technical drawings, often with militaristic, religious, and dystopian themes. He often contributed covers to little magazines within poetry communities such as those at St. Mark’s Poetry Project in New York…

Joseph Dacus was a newspaperman and author in St. Louis during the 1870’s. In July of 1877, when a series of strikes known as “The Great Railroad Strike” swept across the nation, Dacus chronicled the events in St. Louis and later wrote this piece on…

Three years—1828 to 1830—saw the most prolific output ever by a lexicographer: Joseph E. Worcester. First came his abridgment of Johnson’s Dictionary. Converse then approached him to abridge Webster’s masterwork. Worcester declined, but when Converse…

The feisty Lyman Cobb became fixated on Webster’s many flip-flops in spelling—caused in part by Worcester’s influence in the 1829 abridgment, which contradicted Webster. Cobb’s marginal strictures in his copy of the 1828 Webster resulted in this…

Alexander Mackie, publisher of the Warrington Guardian newspaper, demonstrates the Mackie steam-composing machine, also known as the “Pickpocket.” Mackie is shown holding a roll of punched paper tape, which drove the machine. The magazine wrote:…

British engraver and natural history author Thomas Bewick invented wood engraving, which he introduced in this book, at the end of the eighteenth century.  With some technical modifications, by the 1820s, Bewick’s method of wood engraving proved to…

One of the first and the most important of the detective “memoirs” in “yellow-back” form. This copy of a fragile book comes from the former, and extensive, detective fiction collection of Edward and Florence Kaye of New York. According to…

Illustrated. 8vo, full blue levant morocco; gilt tooled paneled back, sides decorated with a wide border of [Aldine] gilt tooling with small panels containing gilt-tooled fish, etc… doublures of dark blue levant morocco, fly-leaves of dark blue…