Mini-Catalogue Monday: 21 Unusual Nineteenth-Century Items

From David Williams's
Cymro yn Mexico, 1826.

It's been a while, I guess, since I posted a link to a small catalogue: but I've finally gathered enough interesting items together to make it possible again.

Nevertheless, this has been a fun list to put together, and while all the items are American (or at least have a crucial link to the Americas or American literature), I am glad to say there are items in French, Welsh, and German here. There are works of literature and works of science, manuscripts and printed books and comics, and some items that push the boundaries.

Perhaps my favorite of these items is the book of typed poems based on a weekly comic published in The Boston Globe in the early part of the twentieth century: I've always been fascinated with the genre of fan writing, where consumers or readers of text become, in turn, producers and writers.

Typescript of poems based on the Fatty Spillaker comics.

The poems in this book are, as it turns out, not very good--but I am not sure that matters so much. The whole production is a remarkable and early example of the fan-fic dynamic, I think.

Anyhow, the whole list is only 21 items, but across a range of interesting and unusual things. Enjoy!