Julia Child

From one of the Smithsonian's blogs:
What’s on Julia Child's bookshelf?

http://blog.americanhistory.si.edu/osaycanyousee/2011/06/whats-on-julia-childs-b...

Michael Lieberman (Book Patrol) rounds up some great photos here too:
http://www.bookpatrol.net/2011/06/books-in-julia-childs-kitchen.html

Ohh, we should ask for a list of all of the books (including publication info).

It would have been Mrs. Child's 101st Birthday today and for the life of me I thought we had tackled her library -- I guess not!

So, the Smithsonian has 27 books (no inventory found online, but lots of photos), I've also found a reference to a souffle book with a Paul Child ownership stamp (Julia's Husband) at the Schlesinger Library at Harvard, so there must be at least a few there, but I can't get any other records to pop. Anyone know of any large collections anywhere? Inventories?

Hmm, I thought they were at Schlesinger ... but maybe that's just her papers, dunno.

Checking HOLLIS, searching 'Child, Julia owner' and narrowing the location to Schlesinger brings up 382 results. At a quick glance, not all but around 340-ish books are marked as being from her library.

Shamefully I had to google who she was.

Nice. Grabbing the Harvard ones and we can import 'em in.

I've taken the online Julia Child's tour, I think what the Smithsonian have is only her kitchen, donated to them in 2001. In the images there is a bookshelf beside the fridge, but I couldn't find a catalogue. The original poster linked to their blog though which does name a few titles.

Awh. Her library looked so cosy.

Bah. Harvard's catalog is giving me MARC yuckily, which is not helpful. I'll keep trying but might not get it tonight.

Searching "Child, Julia, former owner" gets 337 records, which seems pretty close ...

Meanwhile, JuliaChild is open (pw bonjour) if people want to add bits and pieces (photo, bio, etc.).

Hmm, when I search "Child, Julia, former owner" I get 346, but the first item is previously owned by Ruth Lockwood, authored by Julia Child . Her library may be getting smaller.

I'm having too much fun with Galileo's library (Latin and Italian FTW) so I'm going to bow out of this one.

Heh, ack. Well, I'll putter away at it and see if I can narrow it down and figure out what's what.

You might want to try this search on HOLLIS:

authorname:"Child, Julia" and "former owner"

brings up 333 books and 5 magazines, but to confirm that they were Julia's you need to check the additional authors field. Some of the books appear to have belonged to Julia and another person as well.

>12 waitingtoderail: - Yeah, there some copy-specific notes in there about which actually belonged to her. Some of them are at Harvard in multiple copies so those will have info on other owners as well.

My mother and grandmother knew her. It would have been nice to get her whole library—the one in the Cambridge house, before she downsized.

T

FYI, I did some looking, and it looks like James Beard's books are at NYU
http://aleph.library.nyu.edu/F/YEBF4Q9THSY3KEXN1H6F6L1E1GJQRUERY3BR8X7P1D9BPRDTN...

There's some unclarity about whether they are his FOUNDATION's or his.

The NYU collection also has "former owner" for a number of other prominent chefs, including Sara Moulton (living) and Betty Fussell (living, but I thought her dead).

>14 timspalding: - Agreed!

Harvard's OPAC won't give us the right MARC format and apparently it's a bit of a thing to coordinate, but since there are only ~340 of these, seems like we can get them in quickly, so if someone wants to have at it, jump right in. No reason not to, I think.

Ah, I see somebody's started working on Julia's books - can you chime in so we know who you are and which ones you've done? :-)

Thanks!
Jeremy

It's me. I'm in the 90s on the listing on HOLLIS.

How come I can't find Julia Child in the legacy libraries?

>19 lesmel: - Just hadn't added it yet since it wasn't far along. Will put it in the next time I'm adding new LLs (meanwhile, anybody want to keep plugging away at it?)