Collcctions and Critiques

Famous hoax publications by students of the college make up an exhibition on the Ground Floor Hall of Widener Library.

The years between 1908 and 1911 brought forth a group of undergraduates particularly gifted in the art of satire. A flurry of freak issues was the result. Included among these in the display are a yellow "Radcliffe Suffragette", the "Harvard Lowlife", a green "Harvard Prohibitionist", and a copy of the "Brewers Gazette" and the "Anarchist". The editors of these two magazines must have believed in color a as a sales attraction, the former having a delicate pink cover, the latter a flaming red.

Other Parodies

Other parodies in the exhibit include the spurious "Crimson" published by the "Lampoon" in 1933, announcing the election of Henry Eliot Clark, a Midwestern business man, to the presidency of the University, and various "Lampoon" burlesques of national magazines.

On the serious side of student journalism, the display contains copies of the "Republican" and the "Democrat", which were issued as college propaganda sheets during the McKinley Bryan election of 1900. These featured articles by Theodore Roosevelt, Bryan, President Charles W. Eliot, besides other leading professors and public figures.

Curious Paper

A curious little literary paper, the "Harvard Student", was issued briefly in 1905 by a Senior, who urged undergraduates to submit contributions of prose and verse, promising to consider these "humanely."

Examples of the modern student publications here are also shown, among them the "Crimson", "Advocate", "Guardian", "Monthly", "Communist", and "Lampoon."