Rare Books

The Benchley roundup : a selection

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Description: Robert C. Benchley's sketches and articles, published in periodicals like "Life," "Vanity Fair," and "The New Yorker," earned him a reputation as one of the sharpest humorists of his time. His influence on contemporaries such as E.B. White, James Thurber, and S.J. Perelman, or followers like Woody Allen, Steve Martin, and Richard Pryor, has left an indelible mark on the American comic tradition. "The Benchley Roundup," a compendium of the most endearing and enduring work from one of America's funniest and most penetrating wits, includes some ninety-odd pieces selected by Benchley's son Nathaniel, "which seem to stand up best over the years."
Type: Rare Books(Opens in new tab)
Publication date: [1954]
Call number: 610041
Creator: Benchley, Robert (1889-1945)(Opens in new tab)
Provenance: From the library of Jack Smith.

William Smith Benchley diary

Manuscripts

This diary from hotel keeper William Smith Benchley of Newport, New York, provides a detailed record of the many services he provided his patrons including food, drink, and accommodations for the patrons and their animals. The diary also includes local news; state and national politics; meetings and fundraising for the Democratic Party; hotel, railroad, and other local businesses; the local economy; and personal and family news. Also included is information on the early life and the move to California by William Benchley's oldest son Leonidas Brown Benchley, who later owned Helena Ranch and founded the Golden Belt Fruit Company in Fullerton, California.

mssHM 84538

Shipping Pencils

Visual Materials

One boxed set of lead shipping pencils entitled Shipping Pencils, manufactured by Clark Indelible Pencil Co., Northampton, Massachusetts, ca. 1890-1915. The set is comprised of a dozen (2 are missing) pencils, each in a wooden, cylinder-like case bearing a green paper label. Each label reads: "Shipping Pencil. (Clark's pat. Jany. first.) For directing all kinds of merchandise. A substitute for marking brush! Directions: Sponge the place to be marked, with clean water, and write. Manufactured by Clark Indelible Pencil Co., Northampton, Massachusetts." The handle and wood encasing each pencil is made of a darker wood than the slipcase bearing the label. A paper slip is laid into the box, which describes the pencils and their prices.

ephKAEE

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The mirror & the light

Rare Books

If you cannot speak truth at a beheading, when can you speak it? England, May 1536. Anne Boleyn is dead, decapitated in the space of a heartbeat by a hired French executioner. As her remains are bundled into oblivion, Thomas Cromwell breakfasts with the victors. The blacksmith's son from Putney emerges from the spring's bloodbath to continue his climb to power and wealth, while his formidable master, Henry VIII, settles to short-lived happiness with his third queen, before Jane dies giving birth to the male heir he most craves. Cromwell is a man with only his wits to rely on; he has no great family to back him, no private army. Despite rebellion at home, traitors plotting abroad and the threat of invasion testing Henry's regime to breaking point, Cromwell's robust imagination sees a new country in the mirror of the future. But can a nation, or a person, shed the past like a skin? Do the dead continually unbury themselves? What will you do, the Spanish ambassador asks Cromwell, when the king turns on you, as sooner or later he turns on everyone close to him? With The Mirror and the Light, Hilary Mantel brings to a triumphant close the trilogy she began with Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies. She traces the final years of Thomas Cromwell, the boy from nowhere who climbs to the heights of power, offering a defining portrait of predator and prey, of a ferocious contest between present and past, between royal will and a common man's vision: of a modern nation making itself through conflict, passion and courage.

653495

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The mirror & the light

Rare Books

""If you cannot speak truth at a beheading, when can you speak it?" England, May 1536. Anne Boleyn is dead, decapitated in the space of a heartbeat by a hired French executioner. As her remains are bundled into oblivion, Thomas Cromwell breakfasts with the victors. The blacksmith's son from Putney emerges from the spring's bloodbath to continue his climb to power and wealth, while his formidable master, Henry VIII, settles to short-lived happiness with his third queen before Jane dies giving birth to the male heir he most craves. Cromwell is a man with only his wits to rely on; he has no great family to back him, no private army. Despite rebellion at home, traitors plotting abroad and the threat of invasion testing Henry's regime to the breaking point, Cromwell's robust imagination sees a new country in the mirror of the future. But can a nation, or a person, shed the past like a skin? Do the dead continually unbury themselves? What will you do, the Spanish ambassador asks Cromwell, when the king turns on you, as sooner or later he turns on everyone close to him? With The Mirror & the Light, Hilary Mantel brings to a triumphant close the trilogy she began with Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies. She traces the final years of Thomas Cromwell, the boy from nowhere who climbs to the heights of power, offering a defining portrait of predator and prey, of a ferocious contest between present and past, between royal will and a common man's vision: of a modern nation making itself through conflict, passion, and courage"--

653024

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Never Come, Never Go! The Story of Nevada County's Narrow Gauge Railroad edited, selected and introduced by Robert M. Wyckoff (1986)

Manuscripts

This collection is organized to preserve, whenever possible, Robert Hine's original order. This includes most of his original folder titles, the original order of folders, and the original order of some of the boxes. The collection contains Hine's professional work as a historian of the American West and a writer, and includes research notes, photocopied manuscripts, newspaper clippings, interviews, correspondence, and other research related papers. As such, the original order of Hine's papers reflects his process of collecting and referencing them as he worked on various book projects. In some instances, his original folders provide insight into the kinds of questions or themes he was pursuing in the course of his work. Hine also revised the organization of these papers as he prepared them for donation to the Huntington Library in the late 1990s. Despite Hine's own curatorship, some of his papers remained unsorted and unorganized at the time of this collection's cataloging. Those have been organized by the cataloger to reflect, as much as possible, Hine's own organizational methods.

mssHine

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Letters on Hawaii

Manuscripts

Two letters written by Robert Crichton Wyllie from Honolulu and Oahu, Hawaii. In the first, written to Don Antonio Osio (December 21, 1849) in Spanish, Wyllie writes that he has remembered Osio to "the King in his council" (Kamehameka III). He writes that there are those in California who would like to do in Hawaii what "other adventurers have done in Texas," but that foreign governments would not allow the Hawaiian monarchy to be disturbed. The second letter was written to the lawyer John Ricord (December 1, 1854) and includes references to ships' losses in South America and Wyllie's efforts to stop the "depopulation" of native Hawaiians. He writes exensively of a recent event in which he was threatened by "Fillibusters from California" (former gold prospectors led by Samuel Brannan) who wanted Hawaii annexed into the United States, and his supposed raising of a small navy to prevent any attempted takeover.

mssHM 72994-72995

The Benchley roundup : a selection

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William Smith Benchley diary

Shipping Pencils

The mirror & the light

The mirror & the light

Never Come, Never Go! The Story of Nevada County's Narrow Gauge Railroad edited, selected and introduced by Robert M. Wyckoff (1986)

Letters on Hawaii