Room 26 Cabinet of Curiosities

New acquisitions, unique documents, and visual and textual curiosities from the collections.

  • Prison playing cards

    March 30, 2009

    A selection of handmade and delicately stencil-printed playing cards, made by inmates of Russian prisons, ca. 1980s - 1990s.

  • Hello, Goodbye

    March 26, 2009

    From a series of postcards by Kenward Elmslie And a note from Georgia O’Keeffe to Alfred Stieglitz...

  • The crowd outside the bordello

    March 24, 2009

    A peepshow (or kullisentheater) by Martin Engelbrecht, circa 1750, showing the exterior of a bordello (Das Bordell). Hand-colored copper-engraved sheets, made...

  • On Board Noah's Ark with Ludwig B.

    March 19, 2009

    From a group of letters from Ludwig Bemelmans to his editor at Viking Press, Pascal “Pat” Covici, sending news of his travels, works in progress, and...

  • Of fishes and salvage

    March 12, 2009

    Images prepared for a volume of a multi-part Traite general des Pesches (i.e. Peches), edited by H. M. Duhamel du Monceau. While the focus of the volume,...

  • Passport

    March 11, 2009

    Ezra Pound (YCAL MSS 178) *** Jean Toomer (JWJ MSS 1) *** Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant (YCAL MSS 3) *** Witold Gombrowicz *** Henry McBride (YCAL MSS 31) ***...

  • History Repeating

    March 5, 2009

    A comic image from a special edition of a French magazine from 1902, focusing on the folly of the stock market.

  • The Infant's Encyclopedia

    February 26, 2009

    Enciclopedia de la Infancia , a complete run of a little-known periodical published to educate children by the director of the Escuela Normal Mercantil in...

  • Lesbian Pulp Novels, 1935-1965

    February 23, 2009

    View 25 illustrated book covers from the Beinecke Library’s collection Lesbian Pulp Novels By Anastasia Jones (PhD candidate, Yale Department of History...