2013 marks the 100th anniversary of the publication of Du côté de chez Swann (Swann’s Way), the first part of Marcel Proust’s lengthy literary masterpiece, In Search of Lost Time, also known as Remembrance of Things Past. The Rare Book & Manuscript Library is celebrating this milestone with an exhibition drawn from its renowned Proust […]
Category: Manuscripts
Marcel Proust on Writing
July 22, 2013
William Paul Schenk Papers: A New Acquisition Related to Carl Sandburg
May 23, 2011
The Rare Book Library is pleased to announce the acquisition of the William Paul Schenk Papers from his estate early in 2011. In addition to many of his own manuscripts, the William Schenk papers contain a treasure trove of articles, correspondence, and photographs concerning Carl Sandburg and his family. Schenk greatly admired the famous poet […]
Congratulations to our Poet Laureate W. S. Merwin!
August 11, 2010
The Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Illinois now has even more reason to be proud of being the home of William S. Merwin’s papers: on Thursday, July 1, it was announced that William S. Merwin would be named the next poet laureate of the United States. The duties of the Poet Laureate Consultant in […]
Letters from John Ruskin primarily to Joan Severn (Post 1650 MS 0009)
June 2, 2010
Sitting quietly in our vault, awaiting further study is a cache of thirty unpublished letters from John Ruskin to his Scottish cousin Joan (Agnew Ruskin) Severn. Ruskin wrote over 3000 letters to Severn, many of which have been published in the thirty-nine volume edition of The Works of John Ruskin by Edward T. Cook and […]
To the End of the World and Back (Post-1650 MS 334)
May 25, 2010
Under the direction of Captain Sir William Parry, the HMS Hecla and HMS Griper left port on 11 May 1819 destined for the Arctic. Their objective was to continue the search for the Northwest Passage and to pursue the Longitude prize by surpassing the record for a sailing vessel traveling the farthest north (previously set […]
Spanish Antiphonal Manuscript (Pre-1650 MS 209)
April 27, 2010
Recently donated by Roberta Lynn Hay, Pre-1650 MS 209 is a large and imposing addition to The Rare Book & Manuscript Library of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Once used for the observance of the Divine Office, this manuscript is one volume of an incomplete antiphonal of the Temporale cycle of a non-Dominican monastery […]
Letter Reveals Lord North’s Apprehension Over British Defeat at Trenton, 1777
July 6, 2009
***This post was previously posted at the RBML Discoveries from the Vault website*** On the night of Monday, February 10, 1777, Lord North the British prime minister sat at his desk at 10 Downing Street and wrote a quick note to his friend and chief intelligence official, William Eden. In addition to forwarding to Eden […]
Lost Letter from Leopold von Ranke Found!
January 8, 2007
***This post was previously posted at the RBML Discoveries from the Vault website*** The German historian Leopold von Ranke (1795-1886) is today often regarded as the founder of the science of history as a discipline involving the use of a wide range of documents in historical research. At one time, a very interesting letter from […]