Rare books are as much artifacts as they are texts and there is no better proof of this than the ways in which early readers bound, annotated, and otherwise customized their books. Paper in particular was much scarcer in the early modern period than it is today, so fly-leaves and margins were prime spaces in […]
Author: tmette
Annotated Books and Hidden Genealogies
November 18, 2014
Then and Now, There and Here (1914–2014)
November 11, 2014
For Veterans Day 2014, we have invited our colleague Kevin T. McLaughlin to reflect on the impact of the Great War on our local community. – Tony Hynes, Dennis Sears, Caroline Szylowicz, curators of the exhibition First Global Conflict: Contemporary Views of the Great War, 1914-1919. (On exhibit until December 19 in the Rare Book […]
How do you say “Remember, Remember the 5th of November” in Latin?
November 5, 2014
John Milton found a way at the tender age of 17, on the eleventh anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot, when he wrote “In Quintum Novembris.” This rousing mini-epic praises God for preserving the heroic King James from a “band of impious Papists.” The poem ends with Milton’s description of Guy Fawkes festivities in the England […]
University of Illinois-Urbana Rare Book & Manuscript Library Invites Visiting Scholar Applications
November 4, 2014
The John “Bud” Velde Visiting Scholars Program and the 2015 Kenneth S. Brunsman Visiting Fellowship The Rare Book & Manuscript Library University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign CALL FOR APPLICATIONS, 2015-16 Program Cycle The Rare Book & Manuscript Library annually awards two stipends of up to $3,000 to scholars and researchers, unaffiliated with the University of […]
Yummy Acquisition
September 29, 2014
The Rare Book & Manuscript Library of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has recently acquired the first cookbook devoted to pastry making. Le Pastissier françois (The French Pastry Chef), published in 1655 by the great Dutch printing house of Elzevir, is a landmark in the history of cooking and cookbooks. The book is often […]
Freedom of Speech for Me….but not for Thee
September 11, 2014
John Milton (1608-1674). Areopagitica, A speech of Mr. John Milton for the liberty of vnlicenc’d printing to the Parliament of England. London: [s.n.], 1644. Shelfmark: 821 M64 N6. With manuscript warrant issued to John Milton on 25 June 1650. Shelfmark: Pre-1650 MS 0168 John Milton, arguably the most significant English poet of the seventeenth century, was also a republican […]
Proust and the Great War
May 10, 2014
Selected Letters at the University of Illinois by François Proulx, Assistant Professor of French This online exhibition is part of The Great War: Experiences, Representations, Effects, a campus-wide initiative marking the centenary of World War I. (Read more about this exhibition) At the outbreak of World War I in the summer of 1914, Marcel Proust […]
Shakespeare’s Scribe and Skull & Cross Bones?
April 16, 2014
While we were improving the minimal cataloging of our medieval and early modern manuscript holdings, we came across a hand-written copy of one of the earliest specialized English Dictionaries, Henry Manwayring’s Seaman’s Dictionary. Since our library boasts an amazing collection of early English dictionaries, we were not overly surprised. It is always pleasant to see […]
Victorian Scrapbooks Rediscovered
April 15, 2014
Here at The Rare Book & Manuscript Library, seemingly simple reference questions often turn into much deeper discoveries.That was the case when a patron enquired about our material concerning one Martin F. Tupper. If you aren’t familiar with Martin F. Tupper (1810-1889), then you probably didn’t live in the mid-19th century; if you did, you likely […]
A Christmas Carol and Its Corresponding Collector
December 23, 2013
While updating the catalogue record for an 1869 edition of Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, I came across a letter inside the front cover. Dated 3 April 1867, it was written from Andrew Varick Stout Anthony (1835-1906) to Alexander Farnum (1830-1884) regarding William James Linton (1812-1897), an English engraver who had recently immigrated to the United […]