Marley was dead, to begin with…

What better on a cold evening than to curl up with a classic tale of mystery and horror? Even the most cheerful holiday songs tell us “There’ll be scary ghost stories and tales of the glories…” Spooky tales by the fire have been a winter’s tradition for time in memoriam, beginning as a Pagan tradition.  Over the centuries, the tradition has continued in many manifestations. Dickens visited upon Ebenezer Scrooge three spirits, the ghost of Hamlet’s father haunted the ramparts during Christmastide, J.M. Barrie and Robert Louis Stevenson both spun ghostly winter yarns, and Poe – of course – sat his lonely characters before the fire on a midnight dreary. To continue this haunting tradition and as a nod to the on-going London Calling: Victorian Paintings from the Royal Holloway Collection, the Art/Books, Wine/Cheese Book Club will be reading the spine-tingling classic A House to Let by Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, Elizabeth Gaskell and Adelaide Anne Procter. Please join us on Wednesday December 15 at 6:30pm to discuss the novella. Busy that evening? Drop by the Jean Outland Chrysler Library Wednesday through Friday and leaf through favorite tales –scary and otherwise – by Charles Dickens, J. M. Barrie, Robert Louis Stevenson, William Shakespeare, Edgar Allan Poe, Nathanial Hawthorne and many more. Happy reading!

- SMR

Is there a Detective in the House?

Do you love a puzzle? The people in the Victorian era – both in England the United States certainly did. While preparing for the London Calling exhibition we came across three Victorian era puzzles that have us scratching our heads. Are you as clever as 19th century readers? Give these three a try:

A rebus is a word puzzle with where pictures and symbols are used to represent words or parts of words to spell out a message. In the 19th Century they often appeared in monthly magazines - with the answer in the next month’s edition. We imagine this particularly difficult (at least to us!) rebus from the December 1879 issue of Demorest’s Magazine encourages more than a few readers to order the next issue:



Click on the image for a closer view.



Victorian Ladies were also fond of a good puzzle. This riddle in the form of a poem was intended to entertain ladies while also helping them to learn the name and meaning of various types of flowers – can you name the blooms in the" Enigmatical Bouquet" from the Lady’s Almanac 1855?



Click on the image for a closer look!



Finally, this last item offers a puzzle on more than one level. Found in the archives of the Norfolk Museum, this pamphlet appears to be the catalog of an art exhibition held in Norfolk in 1887 on Granby St. . A closer look at the artists who created these works of art raises a few questions.

Click on the image for a closer look!

Unfortunately, this last puzzle remains unsolved – but who knows, perhaps with a little research you can be the one to discover the truth behind these less than believable nom de guerres.

All three of these puzzling items can be found in the Library….







A View from the Stacks: Intern's Journal Week 6

Our wonderful interns Casey and Chelsea have completed their internships and are headed back to school, but they left us with a vivid journal recounting their summer adventures in the Library. Stay tuned for future editions of "A View from the
Stacks" which will continue to appear on the blog during the next few weeks.

Week 6 - Outreach

This was a busy week for the interns in the library! With the library open house scheduled for Wednesday night, Chelsea and I scrambled to finish our independent projects, which included a Book Trailer and Book Collection. For my book trailer, I chose a 1918 book called, Das Werk Von Gustav Klimt. I wanted my trailer to resemble a movie poster. Using Photoshop, I collaged images found within this book and others from Klimt’s oeuvre. For my Collection, I decided to highlight images within the stacks corresponding with the alphabet. Both my Book Trailer and Collection were displayed alongside Chelsea’s at the open house and seemed to receive positive reviews (and should be posted online for viewing). The quiet library was shaken up Wednesday as the open house was a success and we received many visitors!
The second half of our week was spent getting our hands dirty by preparing materials for the upcoming exhibition of Victorian paintings. Chelsea and I looked through the stacks to find interesting books published in the 19th Century – many of which were covered in red rot. We started by pulling every book published during the Victorian era. This, however, proved to be a never-ending task and we switched to pulling attractive books, books with “creative” titles, art books, and books that could only be produced by the Victorians themselves. This narrowed our findings down to about 200 books – a much more manageable task. Each book was photographed, entered into a spreadsheet, and labeled so they could be pulled for later use during the Victorian show. The prettiest books will hopefully be displayed in the library and the others will be accessible to the public online. We hope all our hard works pays off and you enjoy our selections.

  - - Casey Nye, 2010 Summer Library Intern


 Casey and Chelsea's book trailers are below. I'll be posting their collections in the coming week - so stay tuned! The Victorian Books they selected are on now view in the Reading Room.

Chelsea's Art Fraud Trailer (Above)  and Casey's Das Werk Von Gustav Klimt Poster (Right).

Thinking Forward to Fall

We’ve just bid a fond adieu to our Summer 2010 interns and have begun enthusiastically planning displays and events for the Fall. Quite a few museum members, staff and docents have stopped by to catch a glimpse of the catalogue Paintings from the Reign of Victoria: The Royal Holloway Collection, London in preparation for the fast-approaching exhibition. Also, we’re learning all about The History of the World in 6 Glasses by Tom Standage for the August 18th installment of “Art and Books, Wine and Cheese.” Please stop by the library for a copy of the reading list and suggestions on how to locate the books.

Research has been flowing in from all directions! We’ve had history buffs interested in the Pickett-Buchanan ledgers (please see inset photo) and glass enthusiasts researching Art Nouveau lamps. There have been many college students in to complete their end-of-summer class projects (including myself), as well as a large number of high school seniors working on up-coming Art History papers. Thanks to the Summer Teachers Institute 2010, we were introduced to a new group of researchers. We shared knowledge about digital resources, toured the library collections and discussed the how-tos of researching and preparing art-related classroom programming.

We’re looking forward to even busier and more exciting times to come this Fall! Please stop by the Jean Outland Chrysler Library and see what’s going on!

-SCM