Mondo Lizzie Borden

This auction is for a book that is quite interesting but if you wish to read it I would suggest that you Interlibrary loan it for free. It really isn’t a book to buy at a premium as it is a very short reference work that is only 18 pages long. Starting bid is $49.95 and BuyItNow is $99.95.

LIZZIE BORDEN AND THE LIBRARY CONNECTION. RARE

LIZZIE BORDEN AND THE LIBRARY CONNECTION by John David Marshall. 18 page softcover book. Published by the School of Library and Information Studies, Florida State University. Frontis of Lizzie Borden. 18 pages.

INSCRIBED TO KENNETH SOUZA AND SIGNED BY THE AUTHOR ON THE TITLE PAGE

A very rare Lizzie borden item, the theme of this is Lizzie’s connection with three librarians, a judge and, of course, her connection with books

From the New York Times, September 4, 1892.

This is the text of an unpublished talk given at a symposium celebrating Jack Beeson’s opera Lizzie Borden, presented during the1996 season of Glimmerglass Opera, Cooperstown, New York.

It is definitely worth reading, but it does raise a few questions:
Was Lizzie’s love of animals “obsessive”?
Did Emma dress in black the rest of her life?

And there is a particularly troubling paragraph near the end:

Perhaps this is why the true-life story of Lizzie Borden haunts us today.If guilty, she dared the most outrageous rebellion possible; if innocent, her actions after the trial made the townspeople suspect she wasn’t very much grief-stricken.For example, as is well known, she gave a large party to celebrate her freedom; and with her now inherited wealth she bought a new house that she snobbishly called “Maplecroft” and staffed with servants.She re-christened herself Lisabeth and took to buying art and fancy cars.Now that she had money she could travel to Boston and New York, where she befriended people of the stage, throwing parties for them and financing their stays at Maplecroft.

Worth reading, nonetheless, for its learned discussion of 19th Century literature.

Garrison Keillor’s The Writer’s Almanac has a lovely piece on Lizzie Borden commemorating the date of her acquittal.

There are more than a few errors of fact but it is nice that he devoted the space to the story. Something I had not read or heard before is the last line of his entry: “The nursery rhyme about her appears in an English textbook for Japanese students, where it is credited to Mother Goose.” However, I wouldn’t count on it as being the truth until it also appeared in a more reputable source or I found it myself.

And that’s the trouble with Lizzie Borden stories on the Internet. You never know where they get this stuff!