Catalogues

A sampling of some of our more recent catalogues. (Clicking the link takes you to a PDF.)

Occasional List 32: Things Could be Better

Occasional List 32: Things Could be Better

48 interesting and unusual items that suggest things could be better, either because the material is driven by some utopian intent or springs from some dreadful circumstance.

Occasional List 33: Get Schooled

Occasional List 33: Get Schooled

47 interesting and unusual items having to do with education, including Emma Willard’s sister turning to the lottery, or a student at Gettysburg College publishing satirical reviews of the professors of 1882, or an epitome of eccentric free speech on campus.

Occasional List 6: Entertainments

Occasional List 6: Entertainments

28 items related in some way or another to entertainments and amusements. Included is a fine annotated photo album of an amateur baseball player, promotional material relating to two talented armless performers, a nifty image of a patent one-man band, and an ephemeral reminder of the intersection of showmanship, commerce, and apocalyptic thought.

Occasional List 5: Get Right With God

Occasional List 5: Get Right With God

30 interesting items related in some way to the imperatives of religious conversion or of religious observance. Under these broad categories you will find claims relating to the settlement of the lost tribes of Israel in Sweden, or to the United Nations as a sign of end times, and a portrait of at least one woman missionary doctor.

Occasional List 4: Sex

Occasional List 4: Sex

17 interesting and uncommon items relating to sexuality and its associated concerns. Highlights range from an attractive copy of an early (1844/1845) American sex manual and anti-onanism tract, to an early (1884) radical American treatment of divorce, to a curious piece relating to cross-dressing and performance that indirectly influenced the Beats.

Occasional List 2: ZEAL

Occasional List 2: ZEAL

39 interesting 18th-20th century items broadly yoked together as exemplars of ardent emotion, whether for spelling reform, anti-trinitarian mania, champion back-lifting, or speech pathology as a species of public performance.

Catalogue 39

Catalogue 39

95 recent acquisitions, largely 19th century and ranging across some of our usual concerns: American popular medicine, obscure social reform, odd literature, and the dangers of premature interment.