Henry and Servilla: or, The Death Bridal

Henry and Servilla: Or, The Death Bridal, Being a Graphic Account of the New Boston Tragedy. [New Boston, NH, 1854].
The Yale Collection of American Literature has acquired a rare and unusual 19^th century poetry broadside documenting an 1854 murder-suicide in New Boston, New Hampshire; on January 11, 1854, after being rejected by Servilla Jones,  Henry N. Sargent fatally shot the young woman before shooting himself. The event was reported in the New York Times on January 19, 1854 (“The New Boston Tragedy”).

Other recently acquired materials can be located by searching the Library’s Uncataloged Acquisitions Database; new and unusal collection materials are regularly featured at  the Room 26 Cabinet of Curiosities blog.

A Celebration of New Writing

Young African American Poets: A Celebration of New Writing
Poetry Readings by Evie Shockly, Douglas Kearney,
and Amaud Jamal Johnson

Tuesday, October 28, 4pm
Slifka Center , 80 Wall Street (NOTE: this event will not take place at Beinecke Library)
Co-sponsored by the Yale Collection of American Literature
Reading Series and New Ideas in African American Studies
Contact: nancy.kuhl@yale.edu

Evie Shockley is the author of a chapbook, The Gorgon Goddess (2001), and the collection a half-red sea (2006). Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Callaloo, Crab Orchard Review, Fascicle, Hambone, HOW2, and Rainbow Darkness: An Anthology of African American Poetry, and other journals and anthologies. She is an assistant professor of English at Rutgers University. Douglas Kearney is a poet, performer, and teacher. His work has appeared in Callaloo, jubilat, Ninth Letter, and other journals. His first full-length collection of poetry, Fear, Some, was published in October 2006. Amaud Jamaul Johnson is a former Wallace E. Stegner Fellow in Poetry at Stanford University. His poems have appeared in New England Review, Poetry Daily, From the Fishouse, and other journals. He teaches creative writing at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His first book, Red Summer, was the winner of the 2004 Dorset Prize from Tupelo Press.