Posts by NYPL Staff

The Pforzheimer Collection recently acquired a rare piece of early-19th century Parisian culinary ephemera: a large, printed menu from the food shop at the Hôtel des Américains, which carried international delicacies, wines, and liquors.

Take a special Valentine's Day-themed look at a few of the Pforzheimer Collection's new accessions.

What is the meaning behind the signature after Shelley's famed poem, Ozymandias? The romantic secret is revealed...

Discover a rare commemoration of the woman who was second in line for the British throne when she died at age 21.

Who is the once-mysterious creator of a notable 19th-century book of plant illustrations? We discuss her life and work, and the rare copy of her book, now at the NYPL.

The Pforzheimer Collection recently acquired a rare piece of ephemera: the only known copy of an 1811 broadside advertisement for an "Omnigenous Routine of Amusements" produced in London by one Mr. Bologna, Jun.

Some recent acquisitions of the Pforzheimer Collection shed light on the lives of everyday British women of the nineteenth century.

Featuring over a dozen treasures from the Collection, the exhibit includes the manuscript of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s first known extant poem, a lock of Mary Shelley’s hair, and a preliminary design for Lord Byron’s yacht.

A discussion with Dr. Simon Reader, a professor at CUNY Staten Island, about Middlemarch, and the implications of this first edition appearing in digital format.

Shelley's literary response to the events in England was less judicious than Byron's. Oedipus Tyrannus; or, Swellfoot the Tyrant, a two-act barnyard burlesque in which all the leading political figures of the day were satirized, was rushed into print in London and caught the censor's eye the moment it appeared.

When the dissolute, spendthrift son of George III ascended the throne, he wished to rid himself of his wife, Caroline, from whom he had long been estranged, and instituted divorce proceedings against her in the House of Lords. The "trial" lasted for eleven weeks during the summer and autumn of 1820.

Thomas Love Peacock (1785-1866), novelist, poet, trade company official, steam engine expert and gourmet—a Renaissance man of the Romantic age—once convinced his friend and fellow poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, a passionate vegetarian, to cave in to meat-eating.

In the early months of 1832, London was experiencing a devastating public health crisis. A cholera outbreak, which originated in India and had had been lurching across Europe for years, finally arrived in Britain's metropolis. Officials were ill-equipped to contain the infection. The city was nearly quarantined, and eventually the "Cholera Morbis" claimed thousands of lives — among those that of William Godwin, Jr., the younger 

Twelve treasures from the New York Public Library’s Carl H. Pforzheimer Collection of Shelley and His Circle will be featured in Shelley’s Ghost: Reshaping the Image of a Literary Family, a major exhibition which opens today at Oxford University’s Bodleian Library.