Anne Miniver Press

This is the last scholarly essay written by Walter Grossmann, who served the University of Massachusetts, Boston as Professor of History (1966-86) and also as its Library Director (1969-1984). It is a study of “fate and character” upon the two leading heroes in two of his favorite novels, Stendhal’s The Red and the Black and Henry James’s The Princess Casamassima.

This is the story of four booksellers and publishers who had flourishing businesses on Boston’s famed Cornhill during the first half of the nineteenth century. Each started poor but because they were friendly and welcoming to those who shopped at their stores, and were enthusiastic about the titles and authors they printed, they became respected and successful merchants, and helped to make Boston a better place to live, then and today.

“This book can be thought of as an extension of Alan Seaburg’s most recent canal book, Life on the Middlesex Canal. Most Middlesex Canal writings are focused on the engineering, financial, and commercial aspects. In contrast, Seaburg focuses on people related to the canal, impact of the canal on society, and historical events related to the canal. The most significant contribution of this book is the chapter about American Slavery and the Middlesex Canal. Northerners felt virtuous as never having owned slaves, but the economy of the north reaped the benefits of the output of slavery and providing goods and services in support of the slave economy as the author explains. Seaburg does not mince words when he discusses slavery and its stain on our democracy.”

Book review by Howard Winkler, Towpath Topics, Oct 2017

Green River Days is an historical account - with illustrations - of the various families who from 1900 on have lived in an old farm house, after 1934 a summer camp, in a small valley near the Green River and its Covered Bridge in Guilford, Vermont. As such, it reflects all the joys, sorrows, and hopes, which are to be found in rural countryside living – all during the year or just during the summers

Paul Nathaniel Carnes (1921-1979), a longtime minister at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Buffalo, New York and a proponent of desegregation and civil liberties, was the third president of the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA), 1977-79. During his short tenure one of his key focuses was dealing with the sustained financial losses of the UUA’s small publishing house, Beacon Press. His proposal to sell it stirred a vigorous debate, and while not sold by the Association, led to a revitalization of the Press, and its eventual financial stability.

Delightful poems about a mermaid who swims into the harbour of St. Ives, and decides to live with the local poet of St. Ives, Linda Collins. There they have many fun experiences, especially on the day the Queen visits them for Tea. Illustrated by the American artist, Tom Dahill.

Eugene Newhall, or to his two granddaughters Grandpa, was born and grew up in Lynn, Massachusetts until as a youth he moved to nearby Hopedale to work for the town’s famed Draper Corporation. Here he remained for the rest of his life, married, raised a daughter, and was an active member of the town and its Unitarian Church. This simple story shares how he and his family celebrated their Christmas in 1890.

In the 1820s some citizens of Medford, Massachusetts had come to believe that God so loved his children that he saved them all. This teaching about a God of Love was called within Christianity “Universal Salvation.” By the 1830s these Medford folk had built a church on Forest Street and it was active until 1961 when it united with the Hillside Universalist Church and the First Parish to create the Unitarian Universalist Church of Medford. The Universalist legacy to the city was enormous and still contributes to the community’s vitality. Their long time minister, Hosea Ballou 2d became the first president of Tufts College, an institution their denomination had established in the city, and which today is a major American University. The first mayor of the city was the Civil War General, Samuel Crocker Lawrence, whose business of rum making was long a source of employment for the community. And it was one of his son’s who gave the land and funds to construct the Lawrence Memorial Hospital. Their story is an important part of the history of Medford.

Enchanting poetic remembrances of a young boy’s summer weeks spent with his family on Highland Lake in Bridgton, Maine. Beside swimming with pals and adventures night fishing with his Dad, there was – just once – an evening canoe paddle with his very, very first love. Illustrated with family photos.

Here is an account for everyone, which clearly and truthfully relates the origin and evolution of Homo Sapiens, their planet, their universe, and their accomplishments, according to the current disciplines of science, history, culture, and psychology. Its purpose is to help all live well and productively through knowing, understanding, and accepting the true reality of existence. Illustrated.

Robert U. Holden, of Shirley Center, Massachusetts, served in Company B, 291st Infantry, 75th Division of the United States Army in Europe during the Second World War. Many years later, at the request of his younger brother Harley, then the Archivist of Harvard University, he wrote these five essays about his experiences. They are brutally honest and reveal exactly what fighting and killing is all about. The emotional and physical experiences of those battle days became a permanent part of his personality, and the “dogs of war” pursued him until his death in 1993 at age seventy. His memoir should be required reading by everyone.

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Seth Chandler (1806-1889) was a Universalist minister, a leaders of the Restorationist Controversy within that denomination, and for forty-five years minister of the First Parish Congregational Society (Unitarian) in Shirley Center, Massachusetts, and also the author of the town’s first significant history. At his death he left, from his extensive library, about six hundred books and periodicals to the Universalist Historical Society Library, now a part of the Andover-Harvard Theological Library, Harvard Divinity School.

The great historical value of this diary is that it reveals how average boys and girls were raised in Boston at the start of the 20th century. It was kept daily, from December 1907 to December 1908, by the 13 year old son of a Swedish immigrant single parent, who worked as a non-live-in servant to a wealthy Beacon Hill family. As such, it is the story of how most kids whose families on the edge of the Brahmin society lived in the city, and such accounts rarely get published or the attention they deserved.

A celebration of the life of Mary Jean Newhall Seaburg: librarian, book indexer, feminist, daughter, wife, mother, cat lover, and always an independent, caring, liberal, free individual.

The one and only Anne Miniver Cookbook is a collection of recipes from our readers. So enjoy Aunt Peachie’s Baked Macaroni and Cheese; Jean’s Breakfast Cake; Grandma Gerrard’s Plum Pudding; and Trudie’s Lemon and Apple Pies.

This is a useful and helpful anthology of readings appropriate for Unitarian Universalist worship, and private meditation, as they celebrate Easter and Spring. It was edited by the late Carl Seaburg, editor of the classic UU worship anthology Great Occasions, and by the Rev. Mark Harris, Co-minister with his wife Andrea Greenwood, of the UU Church in Watertown, Massachusetts, UU historian, and Instructor in Church Polity at Harvard Divinity School. Illustrated by the American artist, Tom Dahill.

A mother’s diary of the first year with her first child Joy, which she celebrates through writing poems about how she and Joy experienced their new relationship. Each entry becomes a gift to Joy and to herself, as well as a song about living love. Available in the original French version and in an English translation.

Le journal de la mère de la première année avec son premier enfant, Joy, qu'elle célèbre en écrivant des poèmes sur comment elle et Joy ont vécu leur nouvelle relation. Chaque entrée devient un cadeau pour Joy et pour elle-même, ainsi qu'une chanson sur l'amour vivant. Disponible dans la version originale française et dans une traduction anglaise.

The Reader has a bit of whimsy too. Take the CD cover, a painting by Tom Dahill he entitled “Parallel Swimmers” (acrylics on panel). It depicts us, Homo sapiens, swimming with fish, in water. Water that perhaps still has a relationship to the very primeval ocean from which, what we call by the term “life,” first developed, wriggled within, and emerged in forms that led by strange twists and turns and often awkward solutions to our current selves. 

Tom Dahill’s two-and-a-half years (1955-58) as an Abbey Fellow in Mural Painting at the American Academy were pivotal ones that transformed him from a promising student into an accomplished painter. About an exhibit of landscapes painted during his stay, Robert Taylor wrote in the Boston Globe: “One is struck by the original treatment of the abstract design element in these canvasses, the seemingly haphazard groupings that on closer inspection adhere to classic design principles, passages of the abstract amid serene objective surfaces.

A Bibliography, which aims, is to list all of the poems and songs that were written and composed by Judy Goodenough. Updated as necessary.

This is an introductory biography to the America poet Judy Goodenough (1942-1990), whose poetry books reflect the affirmative values inherent in the structure of the natural and human worlds. Her Irish folk songs catch the joy – and sorrow – to be found in life, while her poetry establishes the sturdy faith that allows positive day-by-day living.

The reader will find here the lives and scholarly contributions of two of America’s leading librarians who were active during the last 40 years of the 20th century. Dr. Maria Grossmann served as Librarian of Andover-Harvard Theological Library, Harvard Divinity School, and Dr. Walter Grossmann served as the first Archibald C. Coolidge Bibliographer for the Harvard College Library, and then as Professor of History and Director of the Library of the University of Massachusetts, Boston.

The Massachusetts Universalist Convention established the Charles Street Meeting House in Boston at the foot of Beacon Hill in 1949. Under the leadership of its first and primary minister, Kenneth Patton, and its small but talented congregation, the Meeting House created an innovative liberal faith based on the concept of “a religion for one world.” This collection details it story, and includes a Patton bibliography plus biographical information about  some of the members of the congregation. From time to time the material is updated as needed. Illustrated.