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A `Crevasse’ on the Mississippi | Mark Twain’s Mississippi | NIU Digital Library
This image, found in William Cullen Bryant’s Picturesque America (1872) is another example of the work of Alfred R. Waud. In depicts a breach, or crevasse, in a levee bordering the Mississippi River, presumably during a time of flood or high water.
Posted by Drew VandeCreek, Director of Digital Scholarship, Northern Illinois University Libraries
Red Jacket, by Alfred R. Waud | Abraham Lincoln Historical Digitization Project | NIU Digital Library
Chief Red-Jacket (1750-1830) was known as Otetiani in his youth and Sagoyewatha after 1780. He was a Native American from the Seneca tribe, and was chief of the Wolf clan. He earned the name Red-Jacket because of his fondness for an embroidered red coat given to him by the British for his wartime services.
Illustration, dated 1872, by Alfred R. Waud
Posted by Drew VandeCreek, Director of Digital Scholarship, NIU Libraries
Superior Barbed Wire Factory, DeKalb, IL, c.1898 | W. W. Embree Collection | NIU Digital Library
This photograph shows the Superior Barbed Wire Company factory on South Second Street in DeKalb, Illinois, circa 1898. Barbed wire production became this city’s major industry in the late nineteenth century, following Joseph Glidden’s patent on an effective design for its use in 1874.
Posted by Drew VandeCreek, Director of Digital Scholarship, Northern Illinois University Libraries
Jack Harkaway Among the Savages (1895) | Five Cent Wide Awake Library | Nickels and Dimes
Jack Harkaway adventured to “exotic lands,” helping to propagate the idea of orientalist adventure, but also helped characterize a delight in travel and adventure. The “monsters” in this book are mostly the ones nature already provides, but in their biggest forms.
From page 25:
The growling increased in intensity.
Placing his mouth near the ground, the monster’s noise reverberated around until the dreadful roar could be heard for miles.
When the king of the forest is in a passion, every living thing is stricken with terror, even the birds ceased singing.
No sound broke the stillness of the air.
Presently the beast emerged from her cover, and Monday declared she could smell human flesh.
She was a magnificent tigress, about four years old, and Harvey could not help admiring her beautifully-marked skin, as she walked up and down under a tree, lashing her striped sides with her long tail, which she sometmies [sic] threw right over her back.
Each Monday, NIU’s Digital Library will bring you the best and weirdest of Dime Novels featuring monsters, spooks, creatures, and weird stories for Monster Mondays!
Content Warning: It is NIU Digital Library’s policy to display historical materials without editing their contents, in order to provide a clear picture of historical attitudes for research, scholarship, and comment. The attitudes depicted in these documents do not reflect the beliefs of NIU or its employees.
(More about this collection)
Posted by Sata Prescott, Albert Johannsen Project Director
The Battle of Antietam--Burning of Mr. Mumma's House and Barns | Illinois During the Civil War | NIU Digital Library
The above image is another example of the work of the American illustrator Alfred R. Waud. It depicts a scene from the pivotal Battle of Antietam during the American Civil War. Fought on September 17, 1863 near Sharpsburg, Maryland, the battle cost over 23,000 lives but was itself indecisive. That result served to blunt a Confederate push into the north, however. Heartened by a favorable result after a run of lost battles, President Abraham Lincoln drafted the Emancipation Proclamation, which he released on January 1, 1863.
Posted by Drew VandeCreek, Director of Digital Scholarship, NIU Libraries
A Tragedy of the Sea, or, Nick Carter's Desperate Fight (1905) | New Nick Carter Weekly | Nickels and Dimes
This Nick Carter adventure is a story of piracy and survival. It also features trained attack sharks, and several conversations about how to use sharks in the disposal of inconvenient evidence.
He had covered two-thirds of the distance and it only required a few minutes more to arrive at the land, when a shaowy substance darted past the two men in the water, and Nick saw a flash of white through the mists as the shark turned its belly upward to seize the prey it sought.
Hampered as he was, the detective knew that it would be impossible to put up a good fight against the monster of the deep, and so instead of turning to await its second attack, as he would have done had he been alone--for that would have been decidedly the safer method--he redoubled his exertions to gain the shallow water near the shore.
But he was not quick enough to escape the shark at that.
Each Monday, NIU’s Digital Library will bring you the best and weirdest of Dime Novels featuring monsters, spooks, creatures, and weird stories for Monster Mondays!
(More about this collection)
Posted by Sata Prescott, Albert Johannsen Project Director
“The Battle of Antietam Fought September 17, 1862 -- General Mansfield's Corps in Position in the Center” | Illinois During the Civil War | NIU Digital Library
Another, panoramic view of part of the Battle of Antietam, by Alfred R. Waud.
Posted by Drew VandeCreek, Director of Digital Scholarship, Northern Illinois University Libraries
The Cross of Daggers, or, In the Lair of the Devil Worshippers (1904) | New Nick Carter Weekly | Nickels and Dimes
This Nick Carter adventure features the recurring character Ten-Ichi, a prototype for later characters in comics like Green Hornet’s Kato. The story involves the exposure of a cult of devil-worshippers, the machinations of whom intrepid Nick Carter must thwart by endurance and subterfuge.
From page 11:
“What do you wish to see?”
“The ruler of Hades.”
“He is not here.”
“But I am.”
“Who, then, are you?”
“Who whom I seek.”
“Then, if you are he whom you seek, why come here in search of him?”
Each Monday, NIU’s Digital Library will bring you the best and weirdest of Dime Novels featuring monsters, spooks, creatures, and weird stories for Monster Mondays!
(More about this collection)
Posted by Sata Prescott, Albert Johannsen Project Director
