Nick Cave’s handwritten dictionary of words, 1984.
Nick Cave Collection, the Arts Centre, Melbourne
Illustrated letter from Picasso to Jean Cocteau, 1916 MET
My dear Cocteau
I am quite sad that you are ill. I hope that you will be well soon and that I will see you. At Montparnasse next Wednesday’s festivities in honor of the musician I hope to see you. I have good ideas for our theater story - we shall talk about it.
Best wishes
Picasso (Letters of Note)
The Voynich manuscript is a handwritten book thought to have been written between 1404-1438. Although many possible authors have been proposed, the author, script, and language remain unknown. It has been described as “the world’s most mysterious manuscript”
Vincent van Gogh, Postcard with Two Peasants Digging, April 9, 1885
From Vincent van Gogh to Anton Kerssemakers. Postcard reads: “I am not sure whether I can come to paint next Saturday because I am making a few studies—of potato planting—on which I may have to keep working that day.” NGA
Charlotte Brontë’s handwritten manuscript of Jane Eyre
(Source: bookshavepores)
Manuscript annotations in Avicenna: Canon Medicinae (by University of Glasgow Library)
Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea’s manuscript
Simone died on Apr 14th (1986); Sartre died on Apr 15th (1980). I remember both events (I was 13 in 1980 — I think I started reading Sartre’s books a few years later, but not too many)… April is full of unpleasant memories.
Oscar Wilde’s Letter to Walt Whitman
Partial transcript from The Library of Congress:
Before I leave America I must see you again–there is no one in this wide great world of America whom I love and honour so much. With warm affection, and honourable admiration, Oscar Wilde.
The Walt Whitman Archive fleshes out the story:
On 18 January 1882 Wilde visited Walt Whitman in Camden, where the poet was then living with his brother and sister-in-law. Wilde told Whitman that his mother had purchased a copy of Leaves of Grass when it was first published, that Lady Wilde had read the poems to her son, and that later, at Oxford, he and his friends carried Leaves to read on their walks. Flattered, Whitman offered Wilde, whom he later described as “a fine large handsome youngster,” some of his sister-in-law’s homemade elderberry wine, and they conversed for two hours. Asked later by a friend how he managed to get the elderberry wine down, Wilde replied: “If it had been vinegar I would have drunk it all the same, for I have an admiration for that man which I can hardly express”
Museum unveils Bronte’s teeny tiny early work
A manuscript by British author Charlotte Brontë that fits comfortably into the palm of a hand that fetched 691,000 pounds ($1.1 million) at a Sotheby’s auction in December, more than twice the upper estimate, went on display this week.
old journal pages are such a treasure to find, especially with drawings in them.
I’m trying to imagine what the rest of the book would be like.
