Verso

One afternoon in the Library's archive, I found a battered and scuffed photograph at the bottom of a small pile. Twenty-four men gaze somberly at the camera; all wear jackets and ties. The mere fact that the 19th-century portrait showed Black and white men respectfully intermingled

The Huntington is launching the first major exhibition on the life and work of award-winning science-fiction writer Octavia E. Butler (1947–2006), whose literary archive resides here. She was the first science fiction writer to receive a prestigious MacArthur "genius" award and the first African American woman to win widespread recognition writing in that genre.

"Walden. Yesterday I came here to live." That entry from the journal of Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862), and the intellectual journey it began, would by themselves be enough to place him in the American pantheon of writers and thinkers.

In 2016, The Huntington launched /five, a five-year contemporary arts initiative focused on creative collaboration. The plan? Each year, a different arts or cultural organization is selected to bring in artists to create works in response to The Huntington's library, art, and botanical collections in new and unforeseen ways.

Children with autism react to sensory stimuli in very different ways. Some children on the autism spectrum are overly sensitive, while others are just the opposite. The Huntington offers a range of environments to suit any child's needs.

In 19th-century Britain, the mere fact of being poor could land you in prison—debtors' prison, that is. The history of British prisons and how artists and architects documented the social, political, and legal tensions surrounding prison reform are the main themes of a focused exhibition in the Huntington Art Gallery's Works on Paper room, on view until June 26.

Examining a real book up close can tell us things that a microfilmed or black-and-white online image of the object doesn't show. Scholars often discover interesting information by inspecting a book's watermarks, paper stocks, or bindings.

I've been tracking two people in the archives of the Huntington Library whose careers reveal surprising parallels. One is William Wordsworth, the Romantic-era Lake District poet who made a career of dancing among daffodils and touring the rural reaches of late 18th-century England.