Left-handed
Cover and dedicatory pages from Jean L’Anselme’s Poèmes à la sourieuse rose [Poems to the smiling rose]
(Genève : L.E.C., 1948), a group of pieces written by L’Anselme with his “unschooled” left hand,
in an exercise drawing on the tenets of Art Brut, the school of artistic and linguistic
experimentation defined by Jean Dubuffet, a champion of L’Anselme
and the dedicatee of this volume.
Her Desk
Poet H. D.’s writing desk, beside a portrait of her friend and literary executor Norman Holmes Pearson (Deane Keller, n. d.).
A recent gift to the Yale Collection of American Literature, the provenance of H.D.’s desk is somewhat mysterious; H.D. biographer Barbara Guest writes: “Said to be Christina Rosetti’s, it may originally have belonged to Empress Eugenie, who spent several years in exile in England. Bryher bought the desk for H. D. at the estate sale of Violet Hunt” (Herself Defined, 56). If you have any additional information about this desk, please be in touch with curator Nancy Kuhl (nancy.kuhl@yale.edu).
Related materials and collections: H.D. Papers Finding Aid; H.D. Image Guide; Bryher Papers Finding Aid
The pocket dictionary . . . of Sabotage!
A curious addition to the Beinecke Library’s collection:
This miniature booklet displays a cover title declaring it to be a “thumb dictionary” of French and German terms. The inside cover betrays its true role, since that is distributed by the “Parti Socialiste Clandestin”. Instead of translated words and phrases, this book is full of instructions for members of the French Resistance on how to sabotage German machinery, manufacturing plants, trains, and automobiles.
Dictionnaire Poucet: Français-Allemand (Paris: Garnier Fréres, cicra 1943)
Joe and Lena on the water
Joe Louis and Lena Horne canoeing on Greenwood Lake, New Jersey, September 15, 1941.
Photograph by Carl Van Vechten.
Photographs by Carl Van Vechten are used with permission of the Van Vechten Trust; permission of the Trust is required to publish Van Vechten photographs in any format. To learn more, contact the Curator, Yale Collection of American Literature.
Caftans, Pajamas, Minis, Boaters, Blazers, Turtles
An invitation sent by Mart Crowley to Ruth Ford, 1969.
Bikini Girl
Issue #3 of Bikini Girl (February 1979), when the L.E.S. was the Lower East Side,
and the Mudd Club was the Mudd Club.
(With paper doll cutouts of Fred and Cindy from the B-52s!!!)
Room 26 Cabinet of Curiosities 
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