A SAMPLING OF BOOKS BASED ON RESEARCH IN THE COLLECTIONS
An Artist’s Portfolio: The California Sketches of Henry B. Brown, 1851–52
Thomas C. Blackburn
Malki-Ballena Press, 2006
Scholars spend countless hours sifting through journals, letters, and historical documents to reconstruct the past. But in some instances, words are not enough to tell the whole story.
Such was the case for Thomas C. Blackburn, professor emeritus of anthropology at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, who has gathered together in a new book 37 pencil drawings by little-known artist Henry B. Brown (1816–?). Fourteen of these sketches are housed at The Huntington, while the remaining works in An Artist’s Portfolio can be found in libraries at UC Berkeley, Harvard, and Brown University.
“If not for Brown, there would be no visual record from that era of the Indians of California’s Central Valley,” says Blackburn. While numerous missionaries and explorers documented California’s coastal Indians, the Indians of the state’s Central Valley (the Patwin, Nisenan, Konkow, and Wintun) are less known to historians and anthropologists.
In 1851 John Russell Bartlett, commissioner of the U.S. and Mexican Boundary Commission, hired Brown to document inhabitants and scenery of the Sacramento Valley and Sierra foothills. This was in the wake of the Gold Rush, and in a few short years disease and famine would overtake the indigenous population.
In a sketch of the interior of an Indian house (left), Brown shows a woman pounding acorns in a domestic setting that includes raised beds, basketry, and fishing nets. While Brown supplemented his drawings with an animated correspondence with Bartlett — excerpted by Blackburn — it is evident that the details of artifacts and daily life would be lost to history if not for the survival of the illustrations.
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Puritan Conquistadors: Iberianizing the Atlantic, 1550–1700 Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra Stanford University Press, 2006 The author explores the common characteristics of Spanish and Puritan colonization in the early Atlantic world, breaking away from the traditional viewpoint focusing on the differences between Puritan and Catholic colonization. Both groups, he argues, shared a desire to exorcise demons from the New World, and the Puritan colonization of New England was as much of a crusade against the Devil as was the Spanish conquest. |
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Theater of a City: The Places of London Comedy, 1598–1642 Jean Howard University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007 Howard argues that London’s public stage in the early 17th century depended on the unprecedented demographic growth and commercial vibrancy of the city to fuel its own development. Rather than describing London, the stage participated in interpreting it and giving it social meaning. Howard focuses on particular places within the city — the Royal Exchange, brothels, and ballrooms — and examines the theater’s role in creating distinctive narratives about each. |
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Bohemian Los Angeles and the Making of Modern Politics Daniel Hurewitz University of California Press, 2007 Bohemian Los Angeles brings to life a vibrant and all-but-forgotten milieu of artists, leftists, and gay men and women whose stories played out over the first half of the 20th century and continue to shape the entire American landscape. Hurewitz explores why and how their communities, inspiring both one another and the city as a whole, transformed American notions of political identity with their ideas about self-expression, political engagement, and race relations. |
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The Life of Kingsley Amis Zachary Leader Pantheon Books, 2007 Kingsley Amis first achieved prominence with the publication of Lucky Jim in 1954 and went on to become a dominant figure in postwar British writing as novelist, poet, critic, and polemicist. Leader draws on unpublished works and correspondence from The Huntington archive. He also conducted interviews with a wide range of Amis’ friends, relatives, fellow writers, students, and colleagues. |
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Iron Horse Imperialism: The Southern Pacific of Mexico, 1880–1951 The Southern Pacific of Mexico was an American-owned railroad that operated between 1898 and 1951, running from the Sonoran town of Nogales to Guadalajara. Lewis contends that SP executives, urged on by the news media, operated with a reflexive imperialism that kept the company committed to the railroad long after it ceased to make business sense. |
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