In 1891, four intrepid women from Lowell sailed to a remote island in Boston Harbor for a 17-day escape from New England's prim and proper society. Calling themselves the Scribe, the Aristocrat, the Acrobat, and the Autocrat, the women rusticated in a cottage on Great Brewster Island, reveling in the chance to shed their identities of wife, mother, and daughter. Relive their sojourn through their remarkable journal, filled with observations, illustrations, photographs, and poetry, reproduced here by the Friends of the Boston Harbor Islands.
In 1891, four intrepid women from Lowell sailed to a remote island in Boston Harbor for a 17-day escape from New England's prim and proper society. Calling themselves the Scribe, the Aristocrat, the Acrobat, and the Autocrat, the women rusticated in a cottage on Great Brewster Island, reveling in the chance to shed their identities of wife, mother, and daughter. Relive their sojourn through their remarkable journal, filled with observations, illustrations, photographs, and poetry, reproduced here by the Friends of the Boston Harbor Islands.
In 1891, four intrepid women from Lowell sailed to a remote island in Boston Harbor for a 17-day escape from New England's prim and proper society. Calling themselves the Scribe, the Aristocrat, the Acrobat, and the Autocrat, the women rusticated in a cottage on Great Brewster Island, reveling in the chance to shed their identities of wife, mother, and daughter. Relive their sojourn through their remarkable journal, filled with observations, illustrations, photographs, and poetry, reproduced here by the Friends of the Boston Harbor Islands.
The enduring influence of naturalist and explorer Alexander von Humboldt on American art, culture, and politics Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859) was one of the most influential scientists and thinkers of his age. A Prussian-born geographer, naturalist, explorer, and illustrator, he was a prolific writer whose books graced the shelves of American artists, scientists, philosophers, and politicians. Humboldt visited the United States for six weeks in 1804, engaging in a lively exchange of ideas with such figures as Thomas Jefferson and the painter Charles Willson Peale. It was perhaps the most consequential visit by a European traveler in the young nation's history, one that helped to shape an emerging American identity grounded in the natural world. In this beautifully illustrated book, Eleanor Jones Harvey examines how Humboldt left a lasting impression on American visual arts, sciences, literature, and politics. She shows how he inspired a network of like-minded individuals who would go on to embrace the spirit of exploration, decry slavery, advocate for the welfare of Native Americans, and extol America's wilderness as a signature component of the nation's sense of self. Harvey traces how Humboldt's ideas influenced the transcendentalists and the landscape painters of the Hudson River School, and laid the foundations for the Smithsonian Institution, the Sierra Club, and the National Park Service. Alexander von Humboldt and the United States looks at paintings, sculptures, maps, and artifacts, and features works by leading American artists such as Albert Bierstadt, George Catlin, Frederic Church, and Samuel F. B. Morse. Published in association with the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC Exhibition Schedule Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC September 18, 2020–January 3, 2021
This edited collection understands exploration as a collective effort and experience involving a variety of people in diverse kinds of relationships. It engages with the recent resurgence of interest in the history of exploration by focusing on the various indigenous intermediaries – Jacky Jacky, Bungaree, Moowattin, Tupaia, Mai, Cheealthluc and lesser-known individuals – who were the guides, translators, and hosts that assisted and facilitated European travellers in exploring different parts of the world. These intermediaries are rarely the authors of exploration narratives, or the main focus within exploration archives. Nonetheless the archives of exploration contain imprints of their presence, experience and contributions. The chapters present a range of ways of reading archives to bring them to the fore. The contributors ask new questions of existing materials, suggest new interpretive approaches, and present innovative ways to enhance sources so as to generate new stories.
On the Night of November 28, 1942, a fire raged through Boston's number one glitter spot, the Cocoanut Grove nightclub in the South End. The worst nightclub fire in American history was over within minutes as flames and fumes swept through the two-story building. Some escaped through luck, fate, or guile, but by midnight, more than five hundred people were dead, dying, or maimed for life. In her gripping narrative, journalist Stephanie Schorow tells the story of the tragic night that made the name "Cocoanut Grove" synonymous with horror and devastation. As Schorow writes, "The inferno reached deep into the city's social structure-its politics, medical care, law enforcement, and religious life-and touched nearly everyone in the Boston area that day, even those who had never set foot in the club." Book jacket.
From the revolutionary camaraderie of the Colonial taverns to the saloons of the turn of the century; from Prohibition—a period rife with class politics, social reform, and opportunism—to a trail of nightclub neon so vast, it was called the “Conga Belt,” Drinking Boston is a tribute to the fascinating role alcohol has played throughout the city's history.
