The Village Broadside

A comparison of two bindings from a recent gift highlights changes in bookbinding technology over seven decades. My previous post showcased a rare colonial binding that featured gilt tooling in a very restrained, elegant design. By the 1840s, advances and changing tastes culminated in exuberant gold stamping in this title, telling a different story…

A recent library donation of rare books included the 22nd edition of “Hymns and Spiritual Songs” published in 1771. It joins six other hymnals written by Isaac Watts (1674-1748), an English Congregational minister and hymn writer (most notably “Joy to the World”), whose many hymnals were reprinted long after his death. Three in our collection boast a western Massachusetts provenance…

The generosity of an anonymous donor has brought the extraordinary gift to the Henry N. Flynt Library of a large and varied group of important rare books. Among them is one of the masterpieces of early European printing: the Liber Chronicarum, or the Nuremberg Chronicle, published in Nuremberg, Germany, in 1493, less than 50 years after the printing of the landmark Gutenberg Bible.

In 1876, the Centennial World’s Fair in Philadelphia equally commemorated our country’s past and envisioned its bright future. This fused energy swept into Deerfield with the arrival of artist James Wells (“Champ”) Champney and his writer wife Elizabeth Williams (“Lizzie”) Champney that summer.