This Pegasus is about to break free of its star map and the fish is thinking, “here we go again…”

John Seller, Atlas Coelestis (London, 1677).

This celestial atlas is full of plates that are folded and bound into this little book to use under the starry skies. See the book in person as part of The Living Book: New Perspectives on Form and Function, on display in our main gallery through January 5, 2018. 

This funny little Coot (Fulica alai) found in our copy of Ornithology Mammology shows our disproportionate feathered friend in a stunning hand colored plate by Titian Ramsay Peale. 

Peale, Titian Ramsay, 1799-1885. Ornithology. Mammalogy. [Philadelphia, Pa. : s.n., 1858?]

December of 1774 proved to “slay like Bey” depending on the weather. #sleighlikebey 

Aitken’s General American Register, and Calendar, for the Year 1774 (Philadelphia, 1773).

The owner’s notes describe a snowy December: 

28. Continues to snow at 10 at night. Very deep.

29. Warm, snow very deep. Not good slaying.

30. Fine day, good slaying.

31. Fine day, excellent slaying Schuylkill full of ice & fast in some places.

Illustration in Mary Gove Nichols’s Lectures to Ladies on Anatomy and Physiology (Boston, 1842).

Tomorrow is Women’s Equality Day!

As a Library Company volunteer, Lydia Shaw, a rising senior at Friends Select School, has undertaken the study of Mary Sargeant Gove Nichols (1810-1884) this summer. Although she died long before the certification of the 19th Amendment on August 26, 1920, Mary Gove Nichols is a stand-out example of a 19th-century woman who promoted equal rights for women.

According to Lydia:

Mary Gove Nichols’s Lectures to Ladies is a compilation of her lectures to women on their bodies and health. A health and marriage reformer, Mary wanted women to learn more about their own anatomy, so they would be able to have more control over their bodies. Mary herself was plagued with consumption her whole life. Her sister died of consumption at the age of twenty-one, which Mary argued was exacerbated by wearing a tight-laced corset and exposure to harsh weather. In her lectures, she warned women of corsets and highlighted the effects of popular fashion on the body.

But Mary also explored many, many other topics and movements. [Read more link here] 

If you haven’t heard, today the United States is going to experience a total eclipse [of the heart] and the Library Company is celebrating the event with a mini exhibition on eclipses currently on display in our Logan Room.

We love the title of this book Darkness at Noon but think they could take it up a notch by calling it Ultimate Darkness at High Noon. Drama is everything when talking about a solar eclipse.  

Darkness at Noon.  Boston : D. Carlisle & A. Newell, 1806.

It is #MarginaliaMonday and we are marveled by these leaf prints made by Francis Daniel Pastorius in our copy of Apparatus eruditionis... (1670).

Pexenfelder, Michael.  Apparatus eruditionis... . Norimbergae : Sumptibus Michaelis & Joh. Friderici Endterorum, 1670.    

Sometimes books want to go out in a fancy sweater. 

According to the bookplate, Mary Sandwith (1732-1815) was given this Bible by her grandfather in 1736, when she was a small child. She likely made the needlepoint woolen cover in the Bargello style, or flame stitch, when she was around eleven years old. The spine has the words “Mary Sandwith her BIBLE 1743” embroidered to look like a book label.

The Book of Common Prayer (London, 1702), The Holy Bible (London, 1684), The Whole Book of Psalms (London, 1673) bound together.