In this episode, we’re talking about one of our favorite things to see in the shop: vintage postcards. While today they’re mostly used to show off vacation vistas, in the past postcards conveyed holiday greetings, commemorated historical events, and gave ordinary people an inexpensive way to keep in touch. Around the turn of the century, improvements in postal service, printing, and eventually photography set the stage for a golden age of postcards in the United States and Europe. Their popularity waned as telephones became more common, and dropped dramatically due the rise of social media. Affordable, easy to find, and dealing with a broad range of subjects, old postcards can be a fascinating and fun introduction to collecting. Listen to learn more, and don’t be afraid to drop us a line at info@brattlebookshop.com.
Brattlecast #154 - Golden Leaves of Friendship
Today in the studio we have an 1852 copy of The Oasis: or, Golden Leaves of Friendship, edited by N.L. Ferguson. The Oasis is part of a whole genre of 19th century gift books: illustrated anthologies of poetry, essays, and short fiction with titles like The Keepsake, Forget-Me-Not, and The Book of Beauty. Published annually before the holiday season, they were intended to be given as presents, often with a handwritten inscription from gifter to giftee. Gift books were frequently criticized and parodied—even during the Victorian era—for their hackneyed sentimentality and shallow moralism, and were arguably valued more for their ornamental bindings than their literary content. However, for collectors today, the inscriptions themselves—written by long-dead ordinary people, husband to wife or parent to child—convey a timeless tenderness.
Brattlecast #139 - A Russian Diary
Today in the studio we have a diary that was kept by a teenage girl during her family’s emigration odyssey from Russia to the United States. They left Moscow in 1917, embarking on a year-long journey that took them across the continent on the Trans-Siberian Railroad, then through Vladivostok, Yokohama, Hawaii, and San Francisco. Mostly written in Cyrillic, the diary contains photos, little English-language jokes, and references to Jascha Heifetz, a family friend—and violin prodigy—whose family took a parallel trip when they left Russia. Learn about what makes a diary interesting, our translation processes, and the importance of treating these historical documents with respect on this meandering episode of the #brattlecast.
Brattlecast #126 - Old Textbooks
Today in the studio with us we have a group of primary school textbooks from the mid-1800s. Because so many of these books were printed and distributed, they’re not especially monetarily valuable, but they're still interesting and fun to flip through, and they make great gifts for teachers or recent graduates. On today’s episode we’ll talk about first reading primers with charming illustrations, geography books that reveal the pervasive biases of the times in which they were written, and a Spanish textbook defaced by a student who would go on to greatness. Join us for a look at the schooldays of the past, on this educational #brattlecast.
Brattlecast #37 - Journal Journey
Ken talks handwritten journals and letters: what makes them valuable and how his team at the shop goes about researching them. We'll delve into a Caribbean voyage with a magical conclusion and a utopian community in bucolic West Roxbury, with a side trip to a certain famously far out festival of the late 1960's. Learn whether your journal might also have the 'write' stuff on this week's #brattlecast, an episode to write home about!
