Hear a Playlist of the 336 Songs Mentioned in Bruce Springsteen’s New Memoir, Born to Run

in Books, Music | September 30th, 2016

1024px-brucespringsteen2003

Image by Michele Lucon, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

FYI: Ear­li­er this week, Bruce Spring­steen released his high­ly-antic­i­pat­ed mem­oir, Born to Run. It comes accom­pa­nied by a com­pan­ion album, Chap­ter and Verse. And now a Spo­ti­fy playlist that fea­tures every sin­gle song ref­er­enced in the pages of the book–his own or oth­ers’. There’s lots of Springsteen–most of his discog­ra­phy, in fact–but also great tracks from Aretha Franklin, Van Mor­ri­son, Cream, Lou Reed, Bob Dylan and more. If you need Spo­ti­fy’s free soft­ware, down­load it here. Then set­tle in and enjoy 22 hours of music. You can start stream­ing the music below:

For any­one inter­est­ed, the nov­el­ist Richard Ford has a review of Born to Run (the auto­bi­og­ra­phy) in The New York Times. Ford’s Bas­combe tril­o­gy appears on Spring­steen’s List of His 20 Favorite Books.

Look­ing for free, pro­fes­­sion­al­­ly-read audio books from Audible.com? Here’s a great, no-strings-attached deal. If you start a 30 day free tri­al with Audible.com, you can down­load two free audio books of your choice. Get more details on the offer here.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bruce Spring­steen Plays East Berlin in 1988: I’m Not Here For Any Gov­ern­ment. I’ve Come to Play Rock

Heat Map­ping the Rise of Bruce Spring­steen: How the Boss Went Viral in a Pre-Inter­net Era

Springsteen’s Favorite Books & Read­ing List

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When L. Frank Baum’s Wizard of Oz Series Was Banned for “Depicting Women in Strong Leadership Roles” (1928)

in Books, K-12, Literature, Politics | September 28th, 2016

wizard_oz_1900_cover

We’ve reached the final stretch of the most infu­ri­at­ing, unset­tling elec­tion I’ve ever expe­ri­enced. And we find the U.S. so polar­ized  that—as The Wall Street Jour­nal chill­ing­ly demon­strates in their “Blue Feed Red Feed” feature—the left and right seem to live in two entire­ly dif­fer­ent real­i­ties. Still, one would have to work very hard on either side, I think, to deny the role sex­ism has played. One can­di­date, a known and well-doc­u­ment­ed misog­y­nist, leads mil­lions of sup­port­ers call­ing for his opponent’s death, impris­on­ment, and humil­i­a­tion. That oppo­nent, of course, hap­pens to be the first woman to run on a major par­ty tick­et in a gen­er­al elec­tion.

Do many Amer­i­cans still have a prob­lem with accept­ing women as lead­ers? I per­son­al­ly don’t think there’s much of an argu­ment there, and peo­ple who see the ques­tion as redun­dant mar­vel at how long archa­ic atti­tudes about women in pow­er have per­sist­ed. At least these days we can open­ly have the—often high­ly inflamed—conversation about sex­ism in busi­ness, enter­tain­ment, and gov­ern­ment. And we can sup­port a cul­tur­al indus­try thriv­ing on strong female char­ac­ters in fic­tion, film, and tele­vi­sion. Not so much in 1928, when the Chica­go Pub­lic Library banned The Wiz­ard of Oz, writes Kristi­na Rosen­thal at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Tul­sa Depart­ment of Spe­cial Col­lec­tions, “argu­ing that the sto­ry was ungod­ly for ‘depict­ing women in strong lead­er­ship roles.’”

First pub­lished in 1900, L. Frank Baum’s fan­ta­sy nov­el ini­ti­at­ed a series of 13 Oz-themed sequels, all of which became immense­ly pop­u­lar after MGM’s 1939 film adap­ta­tion. (You can find them all in text and audio for­mat here.) And yet, “through­out the years the books have been opposed for their pos­i­tive por­tray­als of fem­i­nin­i­ty.” Var­i­ous libraries used sim­i­lar excus­es to ban the books through­out the 50s and 60s. The Detroit pub­lic library banned the Oz books in 1957, stat­ing they had “no val­ue for chil­dren of today.” The ban remained in place until 1972. One Flori­da librar­i­an cir­cu­lat­ed a memo to her col­leagues call­ing the books “unwhole­some,” among oth­er things, and caus­ing a run on local book­stores as chil­dren des­per­ate­ly tried to find them.

Oth­er groups decid­ed that the books pro­mot­ed witch­craft in charges sim­i­lar to those levied at the Har­ry Pot­ter series. In 1986, a group of Fun­da­men­tal­ist Chris­t­ian fam­i­lies in Ten­nessee came togeth­er to remove the The Wiz­ard of Oz from their schools’ cur­ricu­lum, protest­ing “the novel’s depic­tion of benev­o­lent witch­es.” They argued, writes Rosen­thal, “that all witch­es are bad, there­fore it is ‘the­o­log­i­cal­ly impos­si­ble ‘for good witch­es to exist.” Many seek­ing to ban the books since have sim­i­lar­ly referred to their pos­i­tive depic­tions of mag­ic and “god­less super­nat­u­ral­ism,” but the Ten­nessee case stands as a land­mark in the Reli­gious Right’s liti­gious cru­sade against the gov­ern­ment. The attor­ney who rep­re­sent­ed plain­tiff Vic­ki Frost called on “every born-again Chris­t­ian to get their chil­dren out of pub­lic schools.”

It’s odd to think of whim­si­cal children’s lit­er­a­ture so seem­ing­ly innocu­ous as The Wiz­ard of Oz books as ter­ri­to­ry in the long cul­ture wars of the 20th cen­tu­ry. But as we are remind­ed every year dur­ing Banned Books Week (Sep­tem­ber 25 − Octo­ber 1, 2016), lit­er­a­ture often arous­es the ire of those incensed by change and dif­fer­ence. Yet their attempts to sup­press cer­tain books have always back­fired, mak­ing the tar­gets of their cen­sor­ship even more pop­u­lar and sought-after. If you’d like to read Baum’s Oz books now, you needn’t con­front a gate­keep­ing librar­i­an; sim­ply head over to our post on the com­plete Wiz­ard of Oz series, with free eBooks and audio books of all 14 female-cen­tric fan­ta­sy clas­sics.

via The Smith­son­ian

Relat­ed Con­tent:

800 Free eBooks for iPad, Kin­dle & Oth­er Devices

The Com­plete Wiz­ard of Oz Series, Avail­able as Free eBooks and Free Audio Books

North Car­oli­na Coun­ty Cel­e­brates Banned Book Week By Ban­ning Ralph Ellison’s Invis­i­ble Man … Then Revers­ing It

74 Free Banned Books (for Banned Books Week)

1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Explore 5,300 Rare Manuscripts Digitized by the Vatican: From The Iliad & Aeneid, to Japanese & Aztec Illustrations

in Archives, Books, History, Literature, Museums | September 26th, 2016

vatican-iliad

Hun­dreds of years before vast public/private part­ner­ships like Google Arts & Cul­ture, the Vat­i­can served as one of the fore­most con­ser­va­tors of cul­tur­al arti­facts from around the world. In the era of the Holy Roman Empire, few of those works were avail­able to the mass­es (except­ing, of course, the city’s con­sid­er­able pub­lic archi­tec­ture and sculp­ture). But with over 500 years of his­to­ry, Vat­i­can Muse­ums and Libraries have amassed a trove of arti­facts that rival the great­est world col­lec­tions in their breadth and scope, and these have slow­ly become pub­lic over time. In 1839, for exam­ple, Pope Gre­go­ry XVI found­ed the Egypt­ian Muse­um, an exten­sive col­lec­tion of Egypt­ian and Mesopotami­an arti­facts includ­ing the famous Book of the Dead. We also have The Col­lec­tion of Mod­ern Reli­gious Art, which holds 19th and 20th cen­tu­ry impres­sion­ists, sur­re­al­ists, cubists, expres­sion­ists, etc. In-between are large pub­lic col­lec­tions from antiq­ui­ty to the Renais­sance.

codex-borgianus

When it comes to man­u­scripts, the Vat­i­can Library is no less an embar­rass­ment of rich­es. But unlike the art col­lec­tions, most of these have been com­plete­ly inac­ces­si­ble to the pub­lic due to their rar­i­ty and fragili­ty. That’s all going to change, now that ancient and mod­ern con­ser­va­tion has come togeth­er in part­ner­ships like the one the Library now has with Japan­ese com­pa­ny NTT DATA.

Their com­bined project, the Dig­i­tal Vat­i­can Library, promis­es to dig­i­tize 15,000 man­u­scripts with­in the next four years and the full col­lec­tion of over 80,000 man­u­scripts in the next decade or so, con­sist­ing of codices most­ly from the “Mid­dle Age and Human­is­tic Peri­od.” They’ve made some excel­lent progress. Cur­rent­ly, you can view high-res­o­lu­tion scans of over 5,300 man­u­scripts, from all over the world. We pre­vi­ous­ly brought you news of the Library’s dig­i­ti­za­tion of Virgil’s Aeneid. They’ve also shared a fine­ly illus­trat­ed, bilin­gual (Greek and Latin) edi­tion of its pre­de­ces­sor, The Ili­ad (top).

japanese-dance-painting

Fur­ther up, from a sim­i­lar time but very dif­fer­ent place, we see a Pre-Columbian Aztec man­u­script, equal­ly fine­ly-wrought in its hand-ren­dered intri­ca­cies. You’ll also find illus­tra­tions like the cir­ca 17th-cen­tu­ry Japan­ese water­col­or paint­ing above, and the ren­der­ing of Dante’s hell, below, from a won­der­ful, if incom­plete, series by Renais­sance great San­dro Bot­ti­cel­li (which you can see more of here). Begun in 2010, the huge-scale dig­i­ti­za­tion project has decid­ed on some fair­ly rig­or­ous cri­te­ria for estab­lish­ing pri­or­i­ty, includ­ing “impor­tance and pre­cious­ness,” “dan­ger of loss,” and “scholar’s requests.” The design of the site itself clear­ly has schol­ars in mind, and requires some deft­ness to nav­i­gate. But with sim­ple and advanced search func­tions and gal­leries of Select­ed and Lat­est Dig­i­tized Man­u­scripts on its home­page, the Dig­i­tal Vat­i­can Library has sev­er­al entry points through which you can dis­cov­er many a tex­tu­al trea­sure. As the site remarks, “the world’s cul­ture, thanks to the web, can tru­ly become a com­mon her­itage, freely acces­si­ble to all.” You can enter the col­lec­tion here.

vatican-botticelli

Relat­ed Con­tent:

1,600-Year-Old Illu­mi­nat­ed Man­u­script of the Aeneid Dig­i­tized & Put Online by The Vat­i­can

Botticelli’s 92 Illus­tra­tions of Dante’s Divine Com­e­dy

15,000 Col­or­ful Images of Per­sian Man­u­scripts Now Online, Cour­tesy of the British Library

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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The Art of Making Old-Fashioned, Hand-Printed Books

in Books, Technology | September 26th, 2016

Reports of tra­di­tion­al books’ death are great­ly exag­ger­at­ed, thanks in part to the suc­cess of print-on-demand pub­lish­ing and oth­er dig­i­tal inno­va­tions.

As thrilled as we are about the sur­vival of the print­ed page—it’s a relief to have some­thing to read after Wi-Fi fails dur­ing the zom­bie invasion—the crafts­man­ship that goes into hand-print­ed, hand-bound vol­umes is an almost-lost art.

The Vic­to­ria and Albert Museum’s video, above, doc­u­ments the painstak­ing process, begin­ning with the arrang­ing of met­al type that will result in an octa­vo, the most com­mon type of book.

It’s a qui­et endeav­or, though sure­ly a bit loud­er than the V&A’s silent doc­u­men­ta­tion, an unusu­al choice giv­en a cer­tain seg­ment of the mil­len­ni­al pop­u­lace’s appetite for well-edit­ed arti­sanal craft videos in which music plays a big part.

A well-deployed tune could ele­vate these love­ly visu­als to the realms of the advanced ele­gy.

YouTube user, Krafts­man Sheng, attempts to rem­e­dy the sit­u­a­tion by repro­duc­ing the video (sans attri­bu­tion) with a sound­track of his own choos­ing—pianist Roger Williams’ syrupy 1965 ren­di­tion of “Soft­ly As I Leave You,” below.

An uncon­ven­tion­al choice, to be sure. I should think some­thing baroque would go bet­ter with all of this metic­u­lous fold­ing, cut­ting, and bind­ing.

Though per­haps some­thing a lit­tle more robust could high­light the hard­core hero­ism of the arti­sans toil­ing to keep this ancient art alive. Elec­tric Lit has a round up of great book-inspired punk songs, of which “Time” by Richard Hell and the Voidoids seems par­tic­u­lar­ly apt.

Print­’s not dead!

via Atlas Obscu­ra

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Brazil Gives Out Books That Dou­ble as Sub­way Tick­ets, Pro­mot­ing Lit­er­a­cy & Mass Tran­sit at Once

The Art of Col­lo­type: See a Near Extinct Print­ing Tech­nique, as Lov­ing­ly Prac­ticed by a Japan­ese Mas­ter Crafts­man

Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty Presents the 550-Year-Old Guten­berg Bible in Spec­tac­u­lar, High-Res Detail

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Her play Zam­boni Godot is open­ing in New York City in March 2017. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Bruce Springsteen Lists 20 of His Favorite Books: The Books That Have Inspired the Songwriter & Now Memoirist

in Books, Music | September 23rd, 2016

1024px-brucespringsteen2003

Image by Michele Lucon, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Bruce Spring­steen turns 67 today. And next week his long-await­ed mem­oir, Born to Run, will final­ly get into read­ers’ hands. In advance of that lit­er­ary event, we’re look­ing back at a 2014 inter­view with The New York Times, print­ed short­ly before Spring­steen pub­lished his chil­dren’s book, Out­law Pete. 

The inter­view takes you inside Spring­steen’s lit­er­ary world, reveal­ing what books he reads, which books he loves, and what authors have shaped his song­writ­ing (and like­ly his own lit­er­ary style): The Times asks: “Who is your favorite nov­el­ist of all time, and your favorite nov­el­ist writ­ing today?;” “Who are your favorite New Jer­sey writ­ers?;” “What’s your favorite mem­oir by a musi­cian?;” “What book, if any, most influ­enced your deci­sion to become a song­writer and musi­cian or con­tributed to your artis­tic devel­op­ment?” The books he namechecks along the way include the fol­low­ing:

You can read the inter­view in its entire­ty here, and find some of the clas­sic books he men­tions in our col­lec­tion, 800 Free eBooks for iPad, Kin­dle & Oth­er Devices. His mem­oir, Born to Run, will be offi­cial­ly released on Sep­tem­ber 27th. The com­pan­ion album, Chap­ter and Verse, is out today.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Online Lit­er­a­ture Cours­es

Bruce Spring­steen Plays East Berlin in 1988: I’m Not Here For Any Gov­ern­ment. I’ve Come to Play Rock

135 Free Phi­los­o­phy eBooks

Heat Map­ping the Rise of Bruce Spring­steen: How the Boss Went Viral in a Pre-Inter­net Era

Springsteen’s Favorite Books & Read­ing List

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The New York Public Library Unveils a Cutting-Edge Train That Delivers Books

in Books, Technology | September 22nd, 2016

In ear­ly Octo­ber, The New York Pub­lic Library will unveil a new book deliv­ery sys­tem that fea­tures 24 cars, run­ning on 950-feet of ver­ti­cal and hor­i­zon­tal track, mov­ing mil­lions of books through 11 dif­fer­ent lev­els of the library, at a rate of 75 feet per minute. This new $2.6 mil­lion book trans­port sys­tem replaces a clunki­er old one where “box­es of research mate­ri­als were placed on a series of con­vey­or belts.”

book-train-at-nypl

Image by Jonathan Blanc/NYPL

Says Matt Knutzen, direc­tor of the Human­i­ties and Social Sci­ences Research Divi­sions with­in the Stephen A. Schwarz­man Build­ing, “This new depend­able and effi­cient sys­tem will ensure a seam­less deliv­ery of research items from our stor­age facil­i­ty to the researchers who need them.”  “Our pri­or­i­ties include pre­serv­ing our mate­ri­als and mak­ing them increas­ing­ly acces­si­ble to the pub­lic in an inspir­ing space for research – our recent stor­age expan­sion, our restora­tion of the Read­ing Room, and the instal­la­tion of this sys­tem are all ele­ments of that work.”

Above, you can watch the new sys­tem at work, chug­ging away, climb­ing to new heights, and deliv­er­ing books to hap­py read­ers.

via Boing­Bo­ing/NYPL

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The New York Pub­lic Library Lets You Down­load 180,000 Images in High Res­o­lu­tion: His­toric Pho­tographs, Maps, Let­ters & More

New York Pub­lic Library Puts 20,000 Hi-Res Maps Online & Makes Them Free to Down­load and Use

100,000+ Won­der­ful Pieces of The­ater Ephemera Dig­i­tized by The New York Pub­lic Library

 

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John Austen’s Haunting Illustrations of Shakespeare’s Hamlet: A Masterpiece of the Aesthetic Movement (1922)

in Art, Books, Literature | September 19th, 2016

austen-hamlet-1

We’ve pop­u­lar­ly come to think of the Vic­to­ri­an era as one in which a prud­ish, sen­ti­men­tal con­ser­vatism ruled with impe­r­i­al force over the arts and cul­ture. But that broad pic­ture ignores the strong coun­ter­cur­rent of weird eroti­cism in the work of aes­thetes like Dante Ros­set­ti, Oscar Wilde, and Aubrey Beard­s­ley.

hamlet-austen

Beardsley’s ele­gant, bawdy illus­tra­tions of Wilde’s erot­ic play Salome scan­dal­ized British soci­ety, as did the play itself. His pen­chant for occult sub­jects and a wicked­ly sen­su­ous style res­onat­ed well into the 20th cen­tu­ry. Salome was a high­light of the Aes­thet­ic move­ment,” writes the Met, “and an ear­ly man­i­fes­ta­tion of Art Nou­veau in Eng­land.” By the 1920s, Beard­s­ley was per­haps one of the most influ­en­tial of lit­er­ary illus­tra­tors.

 austen-hamlet-2

Irish artist Har­ry Clarke took direct­ly from Beard­s­ley in work like his rich­ly-detailed 1926 edi­tion of Goethe’s Faust. And in 1922, British artist John Austen mod­ern­ized Ham­let by draw­ing on Clarke’s ear­li­er work, as well as, quite clear­ly, on Beard­s­ley. As artist John Coulthart remarks, “If you’re going to bor­row a style then you may as well take from the best.” Like Beardsley’s Salome and Clarke’s Faust, Austen’s Ham­let “is often rat­ed as his chef d’oeuvre, and with good rea­son, he man­ages to lend some visu­al splen­dor to a play whose con­cerns are a lot more intro­spec­tive than the usu­al illus­tra­tion stan­dards of The Tem­pest and A Mid­sum­mer Night’s Dream” (just as T.S. Eliot had crit­i­cal­ly argued two years ear­li­er).

austen-hamlet-3

Pub­lished by Dover’s Calla Edi­tions (and recent­ly back in print), Austen’s illus­trat­ed Ham­let takes the fine, spare lines of Beardsley—well rep­re­sent­ed in his Poe edi­tion—and clothes them, so to speak, with Clarke’s “man­ga faces, spiny fin­gers and swathes of black.” Each of the three artists has a dif­fer­ent take on the macabre: Beardsley’s sub­tle sym­bol­ism giv­ing way to Clarke’s sur­re­al­ism and the heavy iconog­ra­phy in Austen’s Ham­let, per­me­at­ed by the play’s arche­typ­al images of “masks, swords and skulls.” Austen would soon leave behind the influ­ence of both artists, adopt­ing a much block­i­er style for lit­er­ary illus­tra­tions lat­er in the decade. In many ways, he rep­re­sents a bridge between the ele­gant Art Nou­veau aes­thet­ics of Beard­s­ley and the mod­ernism of Art Deco, by way of Clarke’s unique goth­ic style.

austen-hamlet-4

You can view and down­load all of the Austen illus­tra­tions online: The Fol­ger Shake­speare Library hosts all 121 orig­i­nal draw­ings in high res­o­lu­tion scans, each of which is down­load­able in res­o­lu­tions up to 3072px. Coulthart excerpts sev­er­al of these images at his blog {feuil­leton}. And at fulltable.com, you can see the Austen illus­tra­tions in con­text with the play’s text in high res­o­lu­tion scans. There, you’ll also find more mod­ernist illus­tra­tions Austen con­tributed to edi­tions of Tris­tram Shandy, Byron’s Don Juan and E.C. Lefroy’s Echoes from The­ocri­tus, and a 1937 instruc­tion­al book on pen and ink draw­ing. In at least one oth­er instance, how­ev­er, Austen retained the styl­ized, Sym­bol­ist Clarke and Beard­s­ley approach—an erot­ic pen draw­ing of She­herezade that pays full homage to Beardsley’s sen­su­al Salome illus­tra­tions.

austen-hamlet-5

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Oscar Wilde’s Play Salome Illus­trat­ed by Aubrey Beard­s­ley in a Strik­ing Mod­ern Aes­thet­ic (1894)

Har­ry Clarke’s 1926 Illus­tra­tions of Goethe’s Faust: Art That Inspired the Psy­che­del­ic 60s

Aubrey Beardsley’s Macabre Illus­tra­tions of Edgar Allan Poe’s Short Sto­ries (1894)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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400 Ways to Make a Sandwich: A 1909 Cookbook Full of Creative Recipes

in Books, Food & Drink, History | September 16th, 2016

Good news for any­one look­ing to escape the tired old sar­dine sand­wich rut — The Up-To-Date Sand­wich Book: 400 Ways to Make a Sand­wich, above, boasts no few­er than ten vari­a­tions, plus a hand­ful of canapés.

The omega-3-rich fish­es may be swim­ming their way back onto trendy 21st-cen­tu­ry lunch menus, but back in 1909, when The Up-To-Date Sand­wich Book was pub­lished, con­vinc­ing din­ers to order them wasn’t such an uphill bat­tle.

Oth­er pop­u­lar ingre­di­ents of the peri­od include tongue, Eng­lish wal­nuts, flow­ers, and of course, cheese, with nary an avo­ca­do in sight.

Author Eva Greene Fuller had a clear pref­er­ence for spread­able con­sis­ten­cies, an insis­tence on “per­fect bread in suit­able con­di­tion” and an eye for detail, evi­dent in such sug­gest­ed gar­nish­es as smi­lax and maid­en­hair fern.

Nat­u­ral­ly, there are some mis­fires amid the 400, at least as far as mod­ern palates and sen­si­bil­i­ties are con­cerned.

The Mex­i­can Sand­wich calls for a spoon­ful of baked beans mixed with cat­sup and but­ter, served atop a large square crack­er.

The Ori­en­tal Sand­wich fea­tures a spread made of cream cheese, maple syrup, and sliced maraschi­no cher­ries.  

The Dys­pep­tic Sand­wich is the only one to use gluten-free bread… sprin­kled with brown bread crumbs. 

The Pop­corn Sand­wich sounds quite tasty except for the tit­u­lar ingre­di­ent, which is passed through a meat chop­per and com­bined with sar­dines, pri­or to being spread with Parme­san and slid under the broil­er.

As for peanut but­ter, it’s a mix-your-own affair, using chopped peanuts and the cook’s choice of may­on­naise, sweet­ened whipped cream, sher­ry or port wine.

And chil­dren are sure to approve of the School Sand­wich, a sim­ple con­coc­tion of but­tered white bread and brown sug­ar.

Below is a taste to get you start­ed, though all 400 recipes can be browsed above. The ini­ti­at­ed may also be inter­est­ed in the ety­mol­o­gy of the word “sand­wich” on the Pub­lic Domain Review, who brought this cook­book to our atten­tion, 

Can­ni­bal Sand­wich

Chop raw beef and onions very fine, sea­son with salt and pep­per and spread on light­ly but­tered brown bread.

Bum­mers Cus­tard Sand­wich

Take a cake of Roque­fort cheese and divide in thirds; moist­en one third with brandy, anoth­er third with olive oil and the oth­er third with Worces­ter­shire sauce. mix all togeth­er and place between split water bis­cuits toast­ed. Good for a stag lunch. 

Aspic Jel­ly Sand­wich

Soak one box (two ounces) of gelatin in one cup of chick­en liquor until soft­ened; add three cup­fuls of chick­en stock sea­soned with a lit­tle pars­ley, cel­ery, three cloves, a blade of mace and a dash of salt and pep­per. Strain into a dish and add a lit­tle shred­ded breast of chick­en; set in a cold place to hard­en; when cold, slice in fan­cy shaped and place on slight­ly but­ter whole wheat bread. Gar­nish with a stick of cel­ery.  

Vio­let Sand­wich

Cov­er the but­ter with vio­lets over night; slice white bread thin and spread with the but­ter. Put slices togeth­er and cov­er with the petals of the vio­lets.

via Pub­lic Domain Review

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Archive of 3,000 Vin­tage Cook­books Lets You Trav­el Back Through Culi­nary Time

Food­ie Alert: New York Pub­lic Library Presents an Archive of 17,000 Restau­rant Menus (1851–2008)

The New York Times Makes 17,000 Tasty Recipes Avail­able Online: Japan­ese, Ital­ian, Thai & Much More

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  She will serv­ing as both emcee and ref­er­ee in this weekend’s Brook­lyn Book Fes­ti­val Illus­tra­tor Smack­down. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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