Verso

Today is the 200th anniversary of Charles Dickens' birth. The English novelist wrote many of his greatest works in serial form, including Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, Bleak House, and Great Expectations. He also wrote a lot of letters. The Huntington has more than a thousand of them, including a group of 35 acquired by purchase through the Library Collectors' Council in 2010.

This is the first in a new series of blog posts about The Huntington's orchid collection.

Last week, the LA Opera once again brought one of its spectacular education programs for school children to The Huntington. The Magic Dream is what the LA Opera calls an "engaging celebration of Mozart's classic opera, The Magic Flute."

Recently, KCET Departures published a series of essays about Olive Percival (1869–1945), an artist, bibliophile, art collector, suffragist, and passionate gardener who lived along the Arroyo. The Huntington Library houses part of the Olive Percival archive

Long before dragons "frolicked in the autumn mist" or terrorized the young wizards of Hogwarts, the mythical creatures were the subject of legend across millennia, throughout numerous cultures and continents.

When Abraham Lincoln completed his Second Inaugural Address in the waning days of the Civil War, Frederick Douglass remarked that "the address sounded more like a sermon than a state paper."

Google "Whistler's Mother" and you'll get 504,000 results. But even famous painters had a "before" period. For James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1834–1903), it was when he was allowed to crash at the London home of his half sister and brother-in-law before his career took off.

In the upcoming celebrations marking the Year of the Dragon, it will be tempting to focus all of your attention on the spectacle of the crowd-pleasing dragon dancers. This Sunday, The Huntington hosts a Chinese Cultural Arts Celebration