The best guide to Boston. Boston illustrated for sale here: price 50 cents / Ethel Reed.

Boston was once a center for shipbuilding and it has always been a neighborhood of immigrants. It was part of the New England corner of triangular trade, receiving sugar from the Caribbean and refining it into rum and molasses, partly for export to Europe. Boston was chartered as a city only in 1822 as a result of a transformation from a small and economically stagnant town in 1780 to a bustling seaport and cosmopolitan center by 1800. It had become one of the world's wealthiest international trading ports, exporting products like rum, fish, salt and tobacco. By the mid-19th century Boston was one of the largest manufacturing centers in the nation, noted for its garment production, leather goods, and machinery industries. Manufacturing overtook international trade to dominate the local economy. A network of small rivers bordering the city and connecting it to the surrounding region made for easy shipment of goods and allowed for a proliferation of mills and factories. Boston's "Brahmin elite" developed a particular semi-aristocratic value system by the 1840s—cultivated, urbane, and dignified, the Brahmin was the very essence of an enlightened aristocracy. He was not only wealthy, but displayed personal virtues and character traits. The Brahmin had expectations to meet: to cultivate the arts, support charities such as hospitals and colleges, and assume the role of community leader. In 1831, William Lloyd Garrison founded The Liberator, an abolitionist newsletter, in Boston. It advocated "immediate and complete emancipation of all slaves" in the United States, and established Boston as the center of the abolitionist movement. The earliest Irish settlers began arriving in the early 18th century and they were forced to hide their religious roots since Catholicism was banned in the Bay Colony but later, throughout the 19th century, Boston became a haven for Irish Catholic immigrants. Today, Boston has the largest percentage of Irish-descended people of any city in the United States. The Irish took political control of the city, leaving the Yankees in charge of finance, business, and higher education. From the mid-to-late-19th century, the Boston Brahmins flourished culturally. Higher education became increasingly important, principally at Harvard (based across the river in Cambridge). The Brahmins were the foremost authors and audiences of high culture, despite being a minority. Emerging Irish, Jewish, and Italian cultures made little to no impact on the elite. From the late 19th century until the mid-20th century, the phrase "Banned in Boston" was used to describe a literary work, motion picture, or play prohibited from distribution or exhibition. During this time, Boston city officials took it upon themselves to "ban" anything that they found to be salacious, immoral, or offensive: theatrical shows were run out of town, books confiscated, and motion pictures were prevented from being shown—sometimes stopped in mid-showing after an official had "seen enough".

Vintage Advertising Posters

Angelina Lippert, chief curator at Poster House, organized the show in an attempt to revive this forgotten icon, who had enjoyed so much fame during her life, only to sink into anonymity. “I was a poster dealer for about a decade. Every poster dealer knew Ethel Reed, but the the general understanding was that her career that lasted three years, and then she disappeared when she moved to Europe,” Lippert said. When Lippert found that Thomas G. Boss had a large collection of Reed’s work, she jumped at the chance to shed some light on Reed now that more is known about her. For a time, Reed was at the apex of the poster craze of the 1890s. Her career began after a friend saw her doodling on a piece of paper, and suggested she submit a design to the Sunday Herald, a weekly special edition of the Boston Herald meant for ladies, full of sewing patterns and cut out paper dolls for their daughters. Reed’s design depicted a woman who looks strikingly like the artist in profile, her long neck slightly curved as she reads a blank newspaper. There’s text at the bottom that reads, “Ladies Want It,” and in the background are three poppy flowers. Reed was a lifelong opium addict, and the flowers darkly foreshadow the end to her story in the very work that began it. Miraculously, the Herald accepted the 20-year-old artist’s design. “It was like if I submitted something to the New Yorker tomorrow and it got in,” says Lippert. “A lot of what happened to her is a bit happenstance. She never really had a plan.” Reed was clever, though, making sure to conceal in public the very thing which animate her work: a powerful sensuality. Papers of the time described her as demure and beautiful, with eyes seemingly perpetually downcast—in short, a perfect lady. In fact, Reed had grown up poor, the daughter of an Irish immigrant who began using opium in her adolescence. She would come to enjoy many lovers throughout her life, though she had defenses at the ready if anyone found out about them. “If anyone caught her with evidence of a man having been in her room, like a top hat on the bed, she would claim that they were artistic props: ‘Obviously, there was no man in my room,’” Lippert said.