From Reading Room Assistant Katherine Monroe “There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.” -Lord Henry Wotton, from Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray October 16th marks the 160th birthday of Oscar Wilde, poet, author, lecturer, and well-known face of the Aesthetic…

By Emily Meehan, Reading Room Assistant A recent Clog article had to do with the lovely libation of wine, but there is yet another drink that all have loved (especially the Brits) since its conception: a nice warm pint of ale! In honor of Oktoberfest and the traditional beginning of the brewing season, it is…

Now that the UCLA Fall Quarter is underway, programming at the Clark Library is starting to rev up for the year. The full 2014-2015 event calendar is online at the Center’s website and below we highlight a couple of upcoming programs that you may be interested in attending!  If you are on Facebook, feel free to befriend…

In 1951 the Clark purchased a 1701 edition of Rider’s British Merlin, an almanac compiled by Cardanus Rider that was published yearly from the mid-17th century until at least 1830. Cardanus Rider was likely a pseudonym for Richard Saunders, an English astronomer and doctor who was born in 1613 and whose actual date of death is unknown….

With the summer winding down and the harvest season fast approaching it seems like a good time to highlight a treasure at The Clark which directly observes harvest seasons of the past.  This hybrid manuscript is both a record of a vineyard’s yield as well as a look into a bookseller’s catalog. This hybrid manuscript…

The Clark recently added two 18th century French manuscripts to its small but interesting collection of schoolchildren’s arithmetic cipher books.  One in particular, that of Dominique Richaud from Aix-en-Provence, is particularly notable for its elaborate and colorful illustrations.   The tradition of the calligraphic arithmetic notebook was well-established in Europe and in colonial North America…

By Reading Room Assistant Stella Castillo A lesser known holding here at The Clark is the Mexican Manuscripts Collection comprised of documents dating from 1579-1828 regarding the Spanish settlement and colonization of California, New Mexico, and one document from 1802 concerning Louisiana. The collection of 29 manuscripts written in Spanish cover issues relating to establishment…

By Reading Room Assistant Stella Castillo The riddle of your future may be solved at The Clark! Recently, I was wondering what the future may hold, so I decided to look into fortune telling and came across several books detailing how to read your palm among other things (like your moles!) to determine your future….

Le tombeau de Louis Ménard and A propos du tombeau de Louis Ménard were among the first things I cataloged when I began working at the Clark 6 years ago and they were a great introduction to the wide variety of formats in the Clark’s manuscript collections.  Though these two companion volumes look like innocent codex manuscripts, bound…

Introducing the Clark’s latest exhibition: THE TEARS OF THE PRESS: PRINT AND AUTHORITY IN 17TH-CENTURY ENGLAND Curated by Dr. Stephanie Koscak and students in her UCLA History Department capstone seminar, Media and Politics in Early Modern England: Nicholas Barlow | Hillary Rose Cleary | Ricardo Aaron Garcia | Brian Jordi Thomas Knight | Amber Ward…