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Peek in the Stacks: special collections

Dreaming Reality with Borges

Jorge Luis Borges was an Argentinian writer known for his surreal storytelling and poetry such as Fictions, "The Aleph," and many others. Borges was inspired to write stories and poems on the theme of dreams and his view of reality, which takes shape as a mixture of reality, dreams, and sometimes even nightmares...

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Emanuel Haldeman-Julius Little Blue Books Collection

Emanuel Julius (later Haldeman-Julius upon marriage) grew up an avid reader. He was born in Philadelphia in 1889 to Jewish immigrants who had fled the pogroms of 19th century Odessa. This would lay the groundwork that would later lead him to create the Little Blue Books, a series of pocket sized books that was published from 1919 through 1978...

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Victorian and Edwardian Greeting Cards

While people around the world have been sending greeting cards for centuries, most cards produced prior to the 19th century were crafted by hand. They were prohibitively expensive for many, and were not widely circulated as a result. Advancing print technologies and the introduction of the...

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James F. Dargan Civil War Diary and Scrapbook

James F. Dargan was born in the town of Randolph, Norfolk County, Massachusetts in 1843. Dargan was the eldest of six children born to Irish immigrants, and by the age of seventeen worked as a boot maker in his father’s shop. On September 17, 1862, at the age of nineteen, he enlisted in the Union Army, 4th Regiment, Massachusetts Infantry, and on that day began a four volume diary of his experiences in the American Civil War...

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Women in Trade Cards

W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan produced fourteen enormously popular comic operas between 1871 and 1896, including H.M.S. Pinafore, the Pirates of Penzance, the Mikado, and more. These works are considered by many to be precursors of the modern musical, distinguished by comedic examination and critique of class, gender, and political systems of the time. The David Trutt Gilbert and Sullivan Advertising Cards Collection contains... 

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