Opening Hours
Daily: 10 A.M.–5 P.M.
Closed on Tuesdays
1151 Oxford Road
San Marino, CA 91108
Rare Books
One hundred dollar misunderstanding : a novel
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Rare Books
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Daily: 10 A.M.–5 P.M.
Closed on Tuesdays
1151 Oxford Road
San Marino, CA 91108
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Manuscripts
The Dickinson & Shrewsbury records contain personal and business correspondence related to Dickinson & Shrewsbury salt mine company, their business and legal records, and files related to the enslaved labor that the company used in their salt mines including the family of Booker T. Washington, who were enslaved by the Ruffner family. The correspondence series, 1799 to 1880, is mostly between prominent company members and family members. The business files series, 1801 to 1857, are made up of financial accounts for the company. The enslaved labor files, 1806 to 1863, contain a variety of documents related to the enslaved people the company "hired out" from other enslavers to work at the salt mines. Many of the documents of the collection are the result of the dissolution of the company and the many lawsuits that were brought about near the end of the company. The topic of the enslaved people the company used is present in each series. The records also relate to several other companies in the same region such as Joel Shrewsbury & Company, and Dickinsons & Shrewsbury. There are also two maps, 1838 and undated.
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Visual Materials
Image of an advertisement for Warfield & Weeks minstrel show, "One Night in a Medical College;" eight African-American men are pictured in a hospital room, five of them holding torches in medical robes that resemble long nightshirts with pointed caps, two brandish knives and razors, and one laying on a cot; two skeletons peek out of barrels in the background; bust-length portraits of
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Rare Books
"The wear and tear of a life spent pursuing the truth into harm's way is catching up with Dave. In fact, it has already caught him. The aged death claims investigator is old enough for his body to hurt even without all the compiled injuries he's sustained throughout his career. Yet when presented with a puzzle-like mystery, Dave can't help but be drawn in. Walking on the beach, a friend finds a bedraggled child who claims he has witnessed a murder. The victim is a drug-addicted pop star, and the obvious suspect is the dead man's ex-girlfriend--a drug addict whom the child saw standing over the body, gun in hand. In the final installment of Joseph Hansen's groundbreaking series, Dave looks for justice once more, hoping that he will also find a lasting measure of peace. Over the course of twelve novels spanning three decades of American culture--from the 1960s to the late 1980s--Joseph Hansen gave readers one of the truly great heroes of detective fiction"--Back cover.
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Rare Books
The year is 2035, and Los Angeles County is awash in a tangelo haze of wildfire smoke. Xandria Anastasia Brown spends her days deep in the archives of the Huntington Library as the curator of African American Ephemera and associate curator of American Historical Manuscripts, supported by an array of AI personal assistants and health bots. Descended from a family of obsessive collectors who took part in the Great Migration, Xandria grew up immersed in African American ephemera and realia: boots worn by Negro Troopers during the Civil War, Black ATA tennis rackets, bandanas worn by the Crips.... Although Xandria's work may preserve collective memory, she is losing a grasp on her own. Evren, her new health bot, won't stop reminding her that her symptoms of long COVID are worsening; not to mention that severe asthma, chronic fatigue, grief, and worrying lapses in reality keep disrupting progress on a new Octavia E. Butler exhibition, cataloging the new Diwata Collection, and organizing the Huntington against a stealth corporate takeover. Then, one morning a colleague Xandria can't place calls to wish her a happy birthday--and the library goes into an emergency lockdown. Sequestered in the archive with only her adaptive technology and flickering intuition, Xandria fears that her life's work is in danger--the Diwata Collection, a radical blueprint for humanity's survival. Up against a faceless enemy and unsure of who her human or AI allies truly are, she must make a choice.
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Manuscripts
There are 631 manuscripts, 525 of which are by Caroline Severance. These include speeches, poetry, essays, articles, notebooks, commonplace books, miscellaneous notes, and a 347-page unpublished autobiography by Caroline Severance entitled "Own Story." The majority of the 10,634 pieces of correspondence is made up of family letters; only 232 letters are written by Caroline Severance. The rest of the correspondence is made up of letters written to Caroline Severance by over 1,700 different authors. The collection contains 9,007 pieces of ephemera, which is made up of address books, appointment books, brochures, business papers, greeting cards, legal documents, newspaper clippings, postcards, fliers, brochures, programs, notebooks, photographs, and financial papers of the family. The manuscripts, correspondence, and ephemera cover the following subjects: African American women suffrage and clubs, Susan B. Anthony, Jessie Benton Frémont, Isabella Beecher Hooker, Julia Ward Howe, child labor reform, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Friedrich Fröbel and the Kindergarten movement, Charles Fletcher Lummis and the Southwest Museum in Los Angeles, Helen Modjeska, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucy Stone, dress reform, suffrage, temperance, Unitarianism, women's rights, women's clubs, and the history, politics and social life of 19th and 20th century Los Angeles, California.
mssSeverance
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Manuscripts
This collection contains the papers of Los Angeles author and gay activist Joseph Hansen and includes drafts of published and unpublished work; correspondence; manuscripts of works by some of Hansen's friends, family, and students; professional papers primarily related to publishing; and personal and family papers. The bulk of the material dates from the 1940s through the early 2000s. The collection includes works by Joseph Hansen, which consists of chiefly typescript drafts for most of Hansen's novels (including those published under the pseudonyms Rose Brock and James Colton), poetry, essays and articles, and television and play scripts. While there are some handwritten edits and corrections among the drafts and proofs, the majority do not have annotations. There are also two boxes with copies of various publications, primarily literary magazines and newspapers, containing Hansen's published work. There are two boxes with various manuscripts of work by friends and family of Hansen including poems by FrancEyE, and drafts of novels: In Search of Truth by Chris Gugas and People Talking to Themselves by Armine D. Mackenzie. There is also a ledger and manuscript by Belle Race from the early 1900s, who presumably was a relative of Hansen's wife Jane Bancroft Hansen. The correspondence in the collection includes both personal and professional letters sent and received by Hansen. There is a sizable amount of correspondence between Hansen and his publishers and agents including Collier Associates, Countryman Press; Holt, Rinehart & Winston; Harper & Row; the John Johnson Agency; Joan Kahn; and Penguin Books. In addition, there are also five folders of rejection letters sent to Hansen. Within Hansen's personal correspondence, notable correspondents include: British author Beryl Bainbridge, who befriended Hansen in the 1970s while Hansen was living in London; English composer and musician Richard Rodney Bennett; the publisher Brandon House, who put out Hansen's Colton books; gay filmmaker Arch Brown, who collaborated with Hansen on a playscript of Hansen's novel Backtrack, which was not produced; American crime fiction writer Dorothy Salisbury Davis, with whom Hansen corresponded regularly; poet, and girlfriend of Charles Bukowski, FrancEyE (aka Frances Dean Smith); American author Philip Gambone who published a profile of Hansen in Something Inside: Conversations with Gay Fiction Writers; poet and literary critic Diana Gioia; gay activist William "Billy" Glover, who worked at One magazine and after helped form the Homosexual Information Center in 1968; poet and literary critic William Harry Harding; gay activist Ross Ingersoll; poet Bill Mohr; critic Terry Teachout, who reviewed some of Hansen's novels; and crime writer Charles Ray Willeford. There are also insignificant pieces of correspondence from well-known individuals: James Blish, James Broughton, Sue Grafton, Tony Hillerman, George Plimpton, Julian Symons, and Andrew Vachss. Professional and personal materials include a variety of materials related to many different parts of Hansen's life, including business, publishing, and financial documents; miscellaneous ephemera, research materials; family papers, with writings and papers by Jane Bancroft Hansen as well as the Hansen's only child Daniel Hansen; press features on Hansen and reviews of his publications; materials related to Hansen's KFI radio program "Stranger from the Sea"; documents related to Hansen's teaching, chiefly at the UCLA extension school; miscellaneous materials related to Hansen's involvement with the gay community such as the Gay Community Services Center and the homosexual Information Center; and some materials related to his work on a 1970 issue of the literary magazine Beyond Baroque. The collection contains one box of photographs with images of Hansen throughout his life, as well as family members including Jane Bancroft Hansen and Daniel Hansen, and some friends and residences. The collection also contains approximately 70 drawings on paper presumably by Jane Hansen from the 1960s, of which many may have been created as part of art class.
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