Milwaukee Connections Continue

The North Point Lighthouse Museum is featuring Box 739 in their July 10 lecture about the lighthouse library system presented by a professor of Victorian literature.

https://northpointlighthouse.org/lecture-series

Box 739 started its life with a visit to Eagle Bluff, WI from August 1, 1898 to May 26, 1899. It came to the east side of the lake also, including South Fox Island. A log kept track of where it’d been making sure recipients got new material. There were over 700 of these boxes circulating nationally by 1893.

Some of the authors remain familiar including James Fenimore Cooper, Robert Lewis Stevenson, and Daniel Defoe. Others are less well-known, Bayard Taylor’s “At Home and Abroad: A Sketch-book of Life, Scenery, and Men” is available on Google Books if you’d care to read part of it:

https://books.google.com/books?id=LuiBEI4LhBsC&pg=PP13&source=gbs_selected_pages&cad=1#v=onepage&q&f=false

While fiction was the most popular, there were also biographies and books on history and science.

In a day before radio or telephone, these were an important source of entertainment and enlightenment at remote lighthouses.