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Christine Jacobson

@cejacobson

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rare book and manuscript curator, occasionally other things too 📍Cambridge, MA

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Some news I am thrilled to finally share: @mollybrrown and I were asked to write the foreword and afterword to a new edition of The Home-Maker by Dorothy Canfield Fisher, reprinted by the wonderful indie heritage press @quiteliterallybooks a century after its initial debut. The book is out on April 7th and you can pre-order now at the link in their bio!

This novel is for you if you appreciate a good screwball premise, have spent any amount of time pondering the division of domestic labor in your household (or the lack thereof), or enjoy a good working girl narrative.

We could not be more pleased to be part of @quiteliterallybooks's mission to bring new readers to out-of-print works—watch their account for other forthcoming titles. We owe a debt to the @persephonebooks festival in Bath where we first met Lisa and Bremond at our panel on The Home-Maker, and to @beaconhillbooksandcafe for hosting our literary round table where we first engaged deeply with the book in community with other women.

So lucky to have collaborated with the great @mollybrrown on this. We hope you enjoy and will come chat with us the second you've put it down. by @cejacobson

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2 years ago

Today is the last day of THANKS FOR TYPING at @houghtonlibrary. It was a dream to co-curate this with @dalestinchcomb and to spend so many months in the company of Lilian, Mabel, Mary, Theodora, Véra, Vivienne, Valerie, and the Mmes Marshall, Dickens, and Rosenfield. Goodbye for now but not for long—there’s so much more yet to uncover!

One of the best parts of this show was giving tours and meeting so many women who shared their own stories of typing, or their mothers and grandmothers’. Thanks you to everyone who came out for those. It was such a joy to connect with you.

🤳 @valentine.tarot
🎶 rec by @mamajama519 by @cejacobson

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5 months ago

Since its invention, the typewriter has been associated with women’s labor. Learn more about the women who took their typing skills out of the office and into the world of arts and letters in our exhibition, "Thanks for Typing," on view through May 1, 2026.

#ThanksForTyping #Women #Labor #HoughtonLibrary #HarvardLibrary

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1) Herkimer County Historical Society. "The Story of the Typewriter, 1873–1923," 1923. 2025-870. Daniel D. Chabris Book Fund, 2025.

3) "Scientific American" Vol. 27, no. 6 (August 10, 1872). Image courtesy of Cabot Science Library.

Lillian Sholes demonstrating a prototype typewriter invented by her father, Christopher Latham Sholes, by unknown photographer, 1872. Image courtesy of the Wisconsin Historical Society.

4) Stenographers sitting at desks in rows taking a civil service exam by unknown photographer, 1909. MS Typ 1446. Daniel D. Chabris Book Fund, 2025.

5) Frontispiece of "The Story of the Typewriter."

6) Margery W. Davies. "Woman’s Place is at the Typewriter: The Feminization of the Clerical Labor Force." Cambridge, MA: Radical America, 1974. Angela Davis’s copy. Loan from Schlesinger Library.

7–8) Underwood Corporation. "The Girl with the Halo." Public Relations Department, Underwood Corporation, 1950. Sperry Rand Corporation. "How to Be a Super-Secretary." Remington Rand Office Machines Division, 1962. Loans from Schlesinger Library.

9) Script supervisor Barbara Cole on location during the production of "Lawrence of Arabia," by unknown photographer, 1962. HTC 2. Daniel D. Chabris Book Fund, 2025.

10) “For Every Purpose” brochure for the Olympia SM3 typewriter, around 1953–57. 8 3/8 in. x 4 in. MS Typ 1446. Daniel D. Chabris Book Fund, 2025. First slide of the carousel featuring the front cover of “The Story of the Typewriter.” by @cejacobson

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8 months ago

two flights, three diet cokes, a bag of peanut butter m&ms and the ecstatic experience of reading a magazine cover to cover by @cejacobson

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10 hours ago

Monday morning moment of zen taken in Cambridge, Massachusetts by @cejacobson

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4 days ago

for a couple of Floridians, I think we managed to give Midge a sufficiently New England summer

Two years makes a tradition right? Swan boat ride on the last day of the season ♥️

We ♥️ Mass Audubon

Bread and Puppet ♥️

“Seaweed guy”

grateful to @longnps for all the great concerts on the lawn this summer ♥️

Midge’s first tall ships

Living deliberately at Walden Pond

She gave him a high five after this

Not even 2 and already over the Natural History Museum glass flowers

she says “Corbusier” at the beginning of this video

The day she met George Washington

Longfellow park

We ♥️ Brattle Bookshop

Distracting the cellist

Never too early to get on board with lilacs

Communing with fellow Margarets at Mount Auburn Cemetery

We spent a lot of time at Longfellow’s house

indoctrination by @cejacobson

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a month ago

Later this week, Thursday and Friday, September 3rd and 4th, I am hosting a virtual closet sale for a good cause. There will be summer frocks, fall boots, a baseball cap for an extinct hockey team, nice handbags, a very soft Danzig t-shirt, a stack of cashmere sweaters for a shockingly low price, maybe a COAT? Half of everything goes to @theyoungcenter, which advocates for unaccompanied immigrant children in legal proceedings. by @cejacobson

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a month ago

back from our first-ever girls trip!!! Unbelievably sweet for Midge and me to spend time with Minnesota relatives. Also important exposure to the virtues of a pontoon boat on grey lake, aunt Julie’s Special K bars, taxidermy, the giant lily pads and Minnesota-themed carousel at Como park, the cat in the window at @wildrumpusbookstore, and the art of the Big Family Photo by @cejacobson

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2 months ago

I made a collage this week—my first ever. Compositionally, I don’t think it is appealing (I find it so unappealing that I couldn’t stand to make it the first image—it’s #3) but it was a deeply cathartic process. I’ve been struggling a lot lately with the things many new mothers struggle with, but have trouble finding words that feel true to my experience. Last week my friend Deb told me about an exercise she was assigning to participants in a workshop she was giving on Emily Dickinson and pedagogy for K-12 instructors: she introduced them to Dickinson’s manuscript poem “Alone and in a Circumstance” (image 2). Some people think this poem is about pooping (no, really) but some read it as a complaint about society encroaching on women’s creative pursuits. The important thing is that it is a collage poem, with a stamp and two clippings from a Harper’s article pasted smack in the middle. Deb asked her students to reflect on their week at the Dickinson Museum by making a small collage in the fashion of Dickinson’s poem. I badly wanted to be in that class with Deb and her students, but then realized I didn’t have to be. I gathered postcards, repros, finger paintings I’d done with Midge, a calendar of quilts. I worked quickly and without overthinking. It was euphoric. Then I found Janet Malcolm’s elegant, layered Dickinson collages—Image 1–and instantly loved them and felt disdain for the careless exuberance of mine. After seeing Malcolm’s I couldn’t go back. For better or worse, I realized if I want to continue to collage, I will have to find a way to protect the ecstatic release of the process but also create something beautiful. And just like that, Deb also brought me closer to understanding Dickinson. “This was a Poet—It is That” by @cejacobson

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2 months ago

Cape with Midge and YaYa 7.25-7.31 2026 by @cejacobson

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2 months ago

this is sticking in my craw today. with this policy, the university is denying an overwhelming body of research that shows flexible work has helped working mothers. (I was dismayed to not find a single article or study on the effect of telework on the disabled and chronically ill, but of course it’s been huge for those communities too.) by @cejacobson

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2 months ago

My contribution to the Widow’s Bay conversation: Tom Loftis has at least three works by Folly Cove designers in his house—such an inspired detail on the part of the set decorator(s)! I have only been able to track down one of the prints (see image 3) but the visual style of the other two is unmistakable! The Folly Cove designers were a group of artists, mainly women, in midcentury Cape Ann, MA who studied drawing and printmaking under the tutelage of the children’s book author and illustrator Virginia Lee Burton. The group depicted scenes from their every-day life in Gloucester (see last two slides for my favorites “Gossip” and “My Friday”) and printed mainly on fabric. Despite cultivating a strong group aesthetic and gaining commercial success through a contract with Lord and Taylor, the group disbanded when Burton died in 68. I have always found their loyalty to her, the increasing homogeneity of the designs, and their abandonment of their work after Burton’s death to be a little eery (but in the best way). So this set decor choice is pitch perfect to me. For more info about Folly Cove (a more pleasant rabbit hole can’t be found), see @capeannmuseum, the work of @pinetreepopup, and the podcast @hapticandhue ✨ images courtesy of the @capeannmuseum collections by @cejacobson

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4 months ago