Earlier this month, volunteer extraordinaire Ashley Johnston re-discovered this gem of a piece while inventorying the library’s art collection, most of which has languished in a storage room since our renovation several years ago. A gift of bookseller and friend-of-the-Clark Ken Karmiole, this hand-colored 18th-century engraving of a naval battle mounted on heavy board is…

The Clark’s reading room and a couple of its offices have deep window wells, open to the basement level from the ground floor.  They regularly trap small mammals who fall into them unawares, perhaps when being chased by a large bird or even by one of the Clark cats (ahem).  In the last month, the…

Please join us for the opening reception for our most recent exhibit, The Invisible World Revealed on May 24th from 5-7pm!  More information on the exhibition, which will run until June 30th. The Invisible World Revealed: Selected Works of the Occult from the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library Exhibition by Brynn Burke and Derek Christian…

Thanks to the Adam Wechsler Fund, the Clark Library was the successful bidder at a recent book auction. The prize? A copy of Paul Verlaine’s La Bonne Chanson with pochoir illustrations by Paul Guignebault. This book of poems was published in 1914 in two limited editions, one of 50 copies printed on japan paper containing…

The Clark’s collection of material related to Robert Baldwin Ross is described in a new finding aid now available via the Online Archive of California.  The large majority of the material cataloged in this finding aid is not new — it has been described in the Clark’s finding aids to the Oscar Wilde and his…

Earlier this week, UCLA English literature professor Joseph Bristow, a great friend of the Clark’s, was  interviewed by The Chronicle of Higher Education about being stuck in Ireland because of volcanic ash.  In the interview, he mentions how students in his Oscar Wilde seminar, which meets weekly at the Clark, had to work on independent…

The Clark has recently acquired this letter from Oscar Wilde to Arthur Fish, dated 8 August 1890, which mentions a photograph that he would like to give Fish before the latter’s wedding day.  The Clark has owned the photograph in question for some time.  A lovely large image, mounted on beveled boards, it is signed…

Though the original purpose of this volume was recording cooking recipes for things like ginger bread and short bread (two of the recipes seen above), it also ended up being a place to press ferns and a place to copy out favorite passages of poetry and prose for a teenage girl named Helen Brackenridg.  The…

Bibliotheca Classica, written by John Lempriere in 1788, is a recent Clark purchase, made with funds endowed by the late Dr. Adam Wechsler, a great friend and supporter of the library. John Carter’s Printing and the Mind of Man names this particular work as “the first specialist work designed as a substitute for, rather than…

So begins the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography entry for editor, writer, figure of scandal and friend of Oscar Wilde, Frank Harris.  A new finding aid describing the Clark’s Harris-related material is now available via the Online Archive of California. Born in Ireland, Harris emigrated to the United States by himself when still a teenager. …