The Digital Archive from the collections of The New York Public Library.

One of the most interesting sites I have found lately is the complete digital archives of The New York Public Library. Ever-expanding, the collection now includes 829,936 historical images available for viewing and downloading. Here are just a few of the hundreds of themes available.

1. Classic Illustrated Zoologies and Related Works 1550-1900 (7900 items)

Pipilo leucopis. White-eyed Towhee. Adult, male. [Shrub, Dwarf Oak.]
















2.  The Denishawn Collection of Dance Photographs (941 items)

Ruth St. Denis in first costume inspired by Egyptian Deities cigarette poster.
















3. Engineering Playing Cards (52 items)

 Two of clubs.

















4. Bookbinding bequeathed by William
Augustus Spencer (704 items)

Front Doublure

















5. Pictures of science: 700 years of 
science and medical illustrations (299 items)

 Total eclipse of the sun. Observed July 29, 1878, at Creston, Wyoming Territory.













6. Dress and fashion: design and manufacture
(566 items)

 Madiana.

















7. Russian book jackets 1917-1942 
(656 items)

 Sel'vinskii, Il’ia L’vovich. Pushtorg. [Fur-Trade.] Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia Literatura, 1931.







8. Farm Security Administration photographs
(1094 items)

 At the "girlie" show at the fair in Rutland, Vermont.













9. Maps from the Lawrence H. Slaughter Collection
(3710 items)

 Orbis terrae compendiosa descriptio : quam ex magna universali Gerardi Mercatoris Domino Richardo Gartho, geographie ac ceterarum bonarum artium amatori ac fautori summo, in veteris amicitie ac familiaritatis memoriam Rumoldus Mercator fieri curabat A0. M.D. LXXXVII.







10. Buttolph collection of menus. (18,964 items)

 ANNUAL DINNER [held by] NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY IN THE CITY OF NEW YORK.
















If you love photograpy, cartography, the theater, early pop culture, postcards, books, history, Americana, New York City, opera, astronomy, biology, botany and literally thousands of other topics this is a great page to enjoy and to do research on your collection of ephemera. You may never sleep again. Amazing. The Digital Collection of the archives of the New York Public Library is available here, and it is free.

"The Curious Cruise of Captain Santa" by Ruth Plumly Thompson (1891-1976). First Edition, published by The Riley and Lee Company, Chicago 1926. Illustrations by John R. Neill (1873-1946)

This is one of the rarest 20th century children's books ever published. Author and illustrator intimately involved with the work of L. Frank Baum, author of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. This copy is in fine condition and is available for purchase here

Ruth Plumly Thompson (27 July 1891 – 6 April 1976) was an American writer of children's stories, best known for writing many novels placed in Oz, the fictional land of L. Frank Baum's classic children's novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and its sequels.

An avid reader of Baum's books and a lifelong children's writer, Thompson was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and began her writing career in 1914 when she took a job with the Philadelphia Public Ledger; she wrote a weekly children's column for the newspaper. She had already published her first children's book, The Perhappsy Chaps, and her second, The Princess of Cozytown, was pending publication when William Lee, vice president of Baum's publisher Reilly & Lee, solicited Thompson to continue the Oz series. (Rumors among fans that Thompson was Baum's niece were untrue.) Between 1921 and 1939, she wrote one Oz book a year. (Thompson was the primary supporter of her widowed mother and invalid sister, so that the annual income from the Oz books was important for her financial circumstances.)
Thompson's contributions to the Oz series are lively and imaginative, featuring a wide range of colorful and unusual characters. However, one particular theme repeats over and over throughout her novels, with little variation. Typically in each of Thompson's Oz novels, a child (usually from America) and a supernatural companion (usually a talking animal), while traveling through Oz or one of the neighboring regions, find themselves in an obscure community where the inhabitants engage in a single activity. The inhabitants of this community then capture the travelers, and force them to participate in this same activity.
 Another major theme has elderly characters, most controversially, the Good Witch of the North, being restored to "marriageable" age, possibly because Thompson herself never married. She had a greater tendency toward the use of romantic love stories (which Baum usually avoided in his fairy tales, with about four exceptions). While Baum's child protagonists tended to be little girls, Thompson's were boys. She emphasized humor to a greater extent than Baum did, and always considered her work for children, whereas Baum, while first and foremost considering his child audience, knew that his readership comprised all ages. The Enchanted Island of Oz (1976), was not originally written as an Oz book. (Courtesy wiki)

John Rea Neill (November 12, 1877 - September 19, 1943) was a magazine and children's book illustrator primarily known for illustrating more than forty stories set in the Land of Oz, including L. Frank Baum's, Ruth Plumly Thompson's, and three of his own. His pen-and-ink drawings have become identified almost exclusively with the Oz series. He did a great deal of magazine and newspaper illustration work which is not as well known today.

Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, John R. Neill did his first illustration work for the Philadelphia's Central High School newspaper in 1894-95. Neill dropped out of Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts after one semester because he said, "they have nothing to teach me".
He then turned to advertising art for the Wanamaker department store in Philadelphia. He became a staff artist of the Philadelphia North American newspaper, for which he produced features like the comics strip Toyland, illustrations for the serialization of 'The Fate of a Crown' (a book by L. Frank Children's Stories That Never Grow Old, and the Sunday comics page 'The Little Journeys of Nip and Tuck' with verses by W.R. Bradford (1909–1910). He was first commissioned to illustrate The Marvelous Land of Oz, the second Oz book L. Frank Baum wrote, published in 1904; The Wonderful Wizard of Oz had been illustrated by W. W. Denslow, with whom Baum argued and lost contact afterward.

Originally, Neill's illustrations were slightly reminiscent of Denslow's to bring continuity and familiarity to the characters, although Neill's work in this period was far more reminiscent of the work of his contemporary and friend, illustrator Joseph Clement Coll. Denslow's illustrations had been quite popular. However, as the series expanded, Neill brought his own unique flair to the illustrations, showing more artistic representations of the characters as well as beautiful paintings of numerous scenes. In fact, he was later named the Imperial Illustrator of Oz.
Neill's illustrations were published in the leading magazines of the first few decades of the twentieth century, including Collier's, Vanity Fair, The Saturday Evening Post, The Ladies Home Journal, Century, Pictorial Review, The Delineator, Boys' Life, St. Nicholas, The People's Home Journal, Adventure and many others. In 1930 and 1931, he contributed a great deal of artwork to Argosy. (courtesy wiki)


For more views of The Curious Cruise of Captain Santa click read more.

Adolf Busch: The Life of an Honest Musician Vol. 1 (1891-1939) and Vol. 2 (1939-1952) by Tully Porter. Limited publication, out of print.

This is an exceedingly difficult book to find and we have an absolute mint copy in stock right now. 2 volumes, 1424 total pages, 200+ illustrations and photographs. Size is 6 1/4 x 9 3/8, 2 music cd's  are intact and never played. I would call this copy "new old stock" but I am not a book dealer. Anyway, it was published by a small, Italian publisher of music literature, Toccata Press. Amazon has 5 new copies for $930 each and 1 used copy for $550, our copy is available for purchase here

 The most extensive review comes to us from Mark Sealey of Classical.net

"Toccata Press is marketed and distributed by the ever-enterprising Boydell and Brewer. Toccata's website provides this background and rationale for the major publication, Adolf Busch: the Life of an Honest Musician: "As the sister company of the CD label Toccata Classics, Toccata Press is expressly dedicated to tackling important subjects that other publishers have failed to address." And so it does in this mammoth title, which was published in the middle of September 2010. Adolf Busch: the Life of an Honest Musician is the work of author – Scottish writer Tully Potter. Potter was born in 1942 has made a special study of performance practice and contributes widely to music publications – in the UK in particular".

"Adolf Busch: the Life of an Honest Musician is the first full length study of the German violinist and composer Adolf Busch, who was born in 1891 and died in 1952 at the age of just 60. Considered the finest player of his instrument for much of the first half of the last century, he was also leader of the legendary Busch Quartet, and was a also a minor composer. This long study (at a grand total of over 1,400 pages, in two beautifully-produced hardback, volumes, with a correspondingly "handsome" price) traces Bush's life from child prodigy in Westphalia, through his understandably speedy rise to prominence and friendship with many equally eminent (German) composers, his successes with the Quartet, refusal to accede to Nazism in Germany, to his emigration to the United States and forging of a new musical life there".

"For Potter, the defining experience in Bush's life was his courageous decision to abandon the following which he'd built up in Germany over many years – Busch was, rightly, described as a very German musician – with the advent of Nazism and his painfully accepted need make a new personal and professional life in the USA. Hence the appellation of "honest" in the book's title. But Potter succeeds admirably in conveying Busch's musical integrity in everything to which he turned his hand. Further, Busch's commitment to the music he played over and above any glory that might accrue to his involvement in it bespeaks another honesty that deserves our admiration. Similarly his talents in the other arts (notably painting, drawing and architecture: he made a point of visiting historic buildings in the locations in which he played) were not inconsiderable. Yet he was modest and unassuming; nor were his tastes conservative. Again an amalgam, a blend of tastes and skills which benefited from and flourished because of an unassuming honesty".

"To call it a "labor of love" (on which Potter apparently worked for over a quarter of a century) is in no way to diminish the author's insight and scholarship. Although his admiration of, and commitment to, the varied work of Bush emerges consistently and unobtrusively at every turn, this is a scholarly edition. Assertions and sources are footnoted (conveniently at the bottom of the page on which they are needed); the indices are exhaustive, accurate – and very full, at 118 pages. Busch's compositions are enumerated, and further indexed. Twelve appendices occupy almost 400 pages. This means, in fact, that the narrative of Bush's life is "just" (!) 700 pages long. So Adolf Busch: the Life of an Honest Musician is as much an encyclopedia devoted to its subject as it is a conventional biography. The appendices examine such areas as repertoire and taste, Busch's reception as teacher, interpreter, interpreter on record, composer and violist. The various Busch ensembles are detailed, including the duo with Serkin. There are bibliographies both of books and journals, and a cross-indexed discography. Thorough, exhaustive and easy to use in the extreme. The biographical narrative reads well and contains well-balanced details, history, reflection and analysis".

"There are over 200 apposite illustrations in Adolf Busch: the Life of an Honest Musician. Chapters range in length from just a dozen pages on Busch's family to nearly a hundred on Bush's periods spent in Vienna and the USA. It really is hard to imagine any aspect of the life and work of Busch that's not covered in this study. Musical illustrations and extracts from scores are present when they add something. But the narrative can easily be read without intimate or advanced knowledge of music theory. Potter is expert at interpreting technicalities and explaining their significances to us. This adds immeasurably to the positive impact of the two volumes. They are substantial and authoritative, yet accessible to the non-specialist, and to those otherwise unfamiliar with Busch's work and world.
Potter's style at times tends slightly to the florid, the colorful. But this is not a serious drawback. His use of ample quotations, examples, illustrations and anecdotes makes the text substantial, solid, reliable and robust. If you are looking for the definitive repository of material on Adolf Busch and/or a near-exemplary biography of a great musician that combines restrained interpretation and explanation with factual discourse so well-conceived and written that it's likely to become a classic, then this will fit the bill without reservations. As a contribution to musical scholarship in an area central to the development of twentieth century performance too, Adolf Busch: the Life of an Honest Musician is sure to succeed and earn a place at the top of the list. Recommended without hesitation".