As if some little Arctic flower Upon the polar hem – Went wandering down the Latitudes Until it puzzled came To continents of summer – To firmaments of sun – To strange, bright crowds of flowers – And birds, of foreign tongue! – Emily Dickinson The Northwest Passage was the name given to the...
Rare Books salutes The Great American Read by inviting you to visit the Special Collections Reading Room on level 4 of the J. Willard Marriott Library to hold first editions of some of the classics included on the 100 list....
“Now sprigs are pricked by bursting buds, and threading the trees the wind’s weft skittles, drops and spurts again, rubbing along the ground to tease old leafings of skittering litter, scratching swirl… Between bettling sky and buxom earth — a mazed and frilling lightning flash! The eye bleaches and goes black. A far-off...
“The white-haired Ziusudra gazes dreaming out to sea. Above his white head, the tall palms dream also, Undulating slowly the green indolence of their leaves. The old man remembers Long days, long since, when he watched other waves Heaving like these, heaving onward eternally, Yet never breaking On any earthly shore; For earth...
“Non ex libris solum, sed ex rebus ipsis scientiam quaeritis.” Gvilielmi gilberti colcestrensis, medici londinensis, de magnete magneticisqve corporibvs, et de magno magnete tellure; phsiologia noua, plurimis & argumentis, & experimentis demonstrata William Gilbert (1540-1603) Londini: excvdebat P. Short, 1600 First edition QC751 G44 1600 This the only published work of...
“And that we may not be decieved by false Notions which we have embraced without Examining, or that we have received upon the Authority of others; we ought to call in Question all such things as have an Appearance of Falshood, that by a new...
“There is no safety but by flight.” Mercury: or the secret and svvift messenger… John Wilkins (1614-1672) London: Printed by I. Norton, for Iohn Maynard, and Timothy Wilkins, and are to be sold at the George in Fleetstreet, neere Saint Dunstans Church, 1641 First edition Z103 W68 1641 This codebook has...
“It has been a most usual thing for the bewitched Persons, at the same time the Spectres representing the Witches, troubled them, to be visited with Apparitions of Ghosts, pretending to have been Murdered by the Witches then represented. And sometimes the Confessions of the...
“She noticed that the girls and boys in the books were not altogether like the girls and boys who played with her in the Square and came to tea with her. The children in the books were wonderfully brave and clever; and when they were...
“Colour and light have an important relationship in the act of seeing…colours multiply among themselves, but, like the elements, there are only four true colours from which other species of colour are born. There is red, the colour of fire; blue, of air; green, of...