The Ransom Center’s Coronelli Celestial globe (ca. 1688) is almost five feet high and depicts several constellations labeled in Italian and Latin. To coincide with the current exhibition, Other Worlds: Rare Astronomical Works, the technology and digital services department developed a virtual model of the globe for our website. Photographer Pete Smith and technology services graduate intern Ramona Broussard describe how they assembled this model:

The first challenge we encountered in creating this virtual model was moving the globe to the photography studio to capture high-quality images. The Ransom Center’s exhibition preparation department had to remove a door so that the large globe could fit inside the photography studio.

After our first test shots, we realized that the lighting would have to be polarized…

Four-time Tony Award-winning playwright Terrence McNally is a frequent focus of theater news these days. This summer he completed a workshop production of his new drama, Unusual Acts of Devotion, at the La Jolla Playhouse, that starred Richard Thomas and Doris Roberts. His latest musical—a stage version of Catch Me If You Can, originally a film starring Leonardo DiCaprio—just closed in a workshop production in Seattle and will move to Broadway sometime in 2010. McNally will also be represented on Broadway this season by revivals of his musical Ragtime and his dramedy Lips Together, Teeth Apart. In March, the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., is mounting a mini-festival of his work titled “Three Nights at the Opera…

Poe’s influence on varied and broad swaths of popular culture—hard-boiled detective fiction, horror and suspense films, song lyrics, crime-scene-analysis dramas, graphic novels—seems to prove Allen Ginsberg’s claim that “everything leads to Poe.” Immortalized in the minds of readers and fans—as well as in television, film, t-shirts, and collectibles—Poe continues to fascinate and inspire.

One classic example is Poe’s appearance on The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album (1967). In their song “I Am the Walrus,” The Beatles declared, “Man you should have seen them kicking Edgar Allan Poe.” The band also made him a member of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club, placing him in a prominent position on the memorable album cover.

Many other popular musicians have paid homage to…

Two new exhibitions, From Out That Shadow: The Life and Legacy of Edgar Allan Poe and Other Worlds: Rare Astronomical Works, open today at the Ransom Center.

In conjunction with the International Year of Astronomy in 2009, the exhibition Other Worlds: Rare Astronomical Works, drawn exclusively from the Center’s collections, showcases important astronomical discoveries of the last 500 years.

In this video, Mary Kay Hemenway, Research Associate and Senior Lecturer of the Astronomy Department at The University of Texas at Austin, shares insight about some of the items that provide an overview of centuries of astronomical discovery.

Manuscripts in scroll form of Edgar Allan Poe's tale, "The Domain of Arnheim," 1847

The Ransom Center has launched the Poe digital collection, where online visitors have the opportunity to see collection and exhibition items, ranging from manuscripts in Poe’s meticulous hand to his annotated copies of the “Tales and Poems” and “Eureka.” The Ransom Center’s Associate Director and Hobby Foundation Librarian Richard Oram, who curated the From Out That Shadow: The Life and Legacy of Edgar Allan Poe, shares his thoughts on Poe and the digital collection:

Edgar Allan Poe has always been a favorite author for visitors to the Ransom Center who want to see a few manuscripts but don’t have a formal research agenda. So many people find a personal connection…

In 1839, while working as an editor for Alexander’s Weekly Messenger, Edgar Allan Poe encouraged his readers to send in cryptographs, or short encrypted texts, that he would then attempt to solve. He explained that the “ciphers” should be simple substitution ciphers, that is, readers should substitute a particular symbol for a particular alphabet letter every time it appeared in a statement. The readers responded, sending, by Poe’s estimate, “nearly one hundred ciphers.” He claimed to have solved all but one, and that one, he argued, was not a true cipher.

Poe was so captivated by cryptography that he incorporated it into his story “The Gold-Bug” in 1843. In this story, the character William LeGrand must solve a puzzle to find…

The Ransom Center Galleries have been closed the past month for the installation of the Ransom Center’s fall exhibition, From Out That Shadow: The Life and Legacy of Edgar Allan Poe.

The exhibition doesn’t open until next Tuesday, but you can visit our Flickr page to see behind-the-scenes photos of curators and staff preparing the galleries and to get a peek at some of the items that will be in on display.

The Ransom Center announces its application process for the more than 50 fellowships that are awarded annually to support scholarly research projects in all areas of the humanities. Applicants must apply by February 1, 2010, and demonstrate the need for substantial on-site use of the Center’s collections.

Recent fellow Daniel Worden, who received a Dorot Foundation Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Jewish Studies, describes his experience at the Ransom Center:

This summer, I worked in the Norman Mailer papers at the Harry Ransom Center, through the support of a Dorot Foundation Fellowship. This research trip allowed me to begin work on my new book project, “Cool Realism: The New Journalism and American Literary Culture.” This book will focus on literary non-fiction from the 1960s…

Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” has been one of his most popular poems since its publication in 1845 in the New York Evening Mirror newspaper. This popularity has led to a number of parodies, or humorous imitations, of the poem. The tradition of writing parodies of “The Raven” dates back at least as far as 1853, when Graham’s Magazine published “The Vulture: An Ornithological Study.” Its first stanza begins:

Once upon a midnight chilling, as I held my feet unwilling
O’er a tub of scalding water, at a heat of ninety-four;
Nervously a toe in dipping, dripping, slipping, then out-skipping
Suddenly there came a ripping whipping, at my chamber’s door.
“’Tis the second-floor,” I muttered, “flipping at my chamber’s door—
Wants a light—and nothing more!”

Visit the Poe Project…