The Greenwich Village Bookshop Door:
A Portal to Bohemia, 1920-1925
In the early 1920s, noteworthy visitors to Frank Shay's bookshop at 4 Christopher Street began autographing the narrow door that opened onto the shop's office. Signed by 242 artists, writers, publishers, and other notable habitués of Greenwich Village, this unusual artifact is now housed at the Harry Ransom Center at The University of Texas at Austin. A literal portal to the past, the door reveals the rich mix of innovators—from anarchist poets to major commercial publishers—that defined this slice of Bohemia from 1920 to 1925.
Design by Percy Anderson, 1916
A Tonic to the Imagination:
Costume Designs for Stage and Screen by B. J. Simmons & Co., 1889-1959
Founded in 1857, Simmons & Co. dominated costume preparation in London for more than 100 years. For decades, staff at Simmons & Co. preserved tens of thousands of original costume designs and costumier's copies of the originals, along with business records and an extensive research library. This exhibition is organized into ten categories of costume design and showcases 228 selected images drawn from 60 film and theater productions. A Tonic to the Imagination was made possible by a generous grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, which provided funds for the preservation and cataloging of the collection.
Photo by Dorothy Babb
Sanora Babb, Stories from the American High Plains
The American novelist Sanora Babb (1907-2005) drew on the natural beauty of the American High Plains and the difficult conditions of her childhood there to give voice to a people who left little written record of their own lives and who receive scant representation in histories. The exhibition Sanora Babb, Stories from the American High Plains highlights Babb's accomplishments as a fiction writer and illustrates with historical photographs the plight of Depression-era Americans.
©2006 Jerry Bauer, all rights
reserved. Used with permission.
Fathoms from Anywhere: A Samuel Beckett Centenary Exhibition
For some, Samuel Beckett (1906-1989) is one of the great comic writers of all time. For others, his is a tragic world. And for still others, he is a religious writer, his works a witness to the indomitable spirit of the Godhead-in-man. Whatever one's views, most contemporary critics would agree that Samuel Beckett has given us, in English and in French, the most original work of our time. This exhibition honored the man and the work on the occasion of the centennial of his birth on April 13, 1906.
Photo by Sheila Duncan
David Douglas Duncan
In October 1996, world-famous photographer and author David Douglas Duncan donated his archive to the Harry Ransom Center. From the beginning, Duncan envisioned his archive as an active collection, a tool for scholarship and learning, not merely a body of exhibition photographs waiting for display. This web portal serves as an introduction to Duncan, his imagery, publications, and exhibitions, and the valuable resources to be found in all his collected materials. A gallery of over 600 images serves as a more comprehensive exposition of Duncan's vision, career, and unique spirit.
The Gutenberg Bible
The Gutenberg Bible is the first substantial book printed from movable type on a printing press. The Ransom Center holds one of five complete copies in the United States.
Gone With The Wind
How the rights to the novel were aquired; the two year search for the perfect actress to play Scarlett O'Hara; costumes and makeup.
The Woodward and Bernstein Watergate Papers
Now available to the public are Woodward and Bernstein's notes from source interviews, drafts of newspaper stories and books, memos, letters, tape recordings, research materials, and other Watergate papers.
The First Photograph
One of the finest pieces of the Ransom Center's photography collection is the first photograph, which Frenchman Joseph Nicéphore Niépce produced in 1826.
Lewis Carroll
Photographs, original manuscripts, and rare publications by Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, the man known to the world by his pen name Lewis Carroll.
William Morris
Designer and manufacturer of furniture, stained glass, tapestries, wallpaper and chintzes; accomplished weaver; pioneering preservationist; active social reformer; successful poet and novelist; founder of the Kelmscott Press.
