Last Thursday, July 19th, the Rare Book & Manuscript Library and the University Library participated in the first ever Illini Fest in Chicago. The gathering lasted 3 hours and was a celebration of the University and its alumni. The event was a huge success: hundreds of people stopped by to participate and learn, and enjoy […]
Category: Uncategorized
RBML Rocks at the Illini Fest in Chicago
July 30, 2019
Once Upon a Time: Fairy Tales from Around the World
May 16, 2019
Fairy tales are short, fantastical stories of folklore that were told orally for hundreds of years before being recorded. As works of folklore, fairy tales do not usually have a single author but rather are attributed to the groups of people from which the stories are believed to originate. A fairy tale typically begins with […]
Rosa Lee Ingram and Black Feminist Organizing
March 28, 2019
In November of 1947, a death in Ellaville, Georgia, led to a court case that caused national outrage and protests for the rights of black women in the Jim Crow South. At the center of the court case was Rosa Lee Ingram, a black sharecropper who, along with her three oldest sons, was accused of […]
German Myths & Fairy Tales
March 20, 2019
Written by Taylor Fisk Henning Myths and fairy tales are two different types of stories that share a tradition of being passed down orally through many generations. Because of this oral tradition and the diffusion of tales throughout time, there are countless variants of the same stories in many different lands and cultures. In most […]
Making Mr. Darcy: Cultural Context for the Regency Gentleman
February 21, 2019
Curated by Lynne M. Thomas Feb 21 – May 24, 2019 On display in the Ellen and Nirmal Chatterjee Exhibition Gallery Join us in The Rare Book & Manuscript Library for our spring exhibition, “Making Mr. Darcy: Cultural Context for the Regency Gentleman,” curated by Lynne M. Thomas, Juanita J. and Robert E. Simpson Rare Book […]
Books of Hours: Devotional and Decorative Practices
February 19, 2019
written by Katie Funderburg Developing out of increased veneration of the Virgin Mary that occurred throughout Western Europe in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, Books of Hours are devotional texts that allowed the average person to model their daily approach to worship after the ordained clergy. The genre receives its name from the organizational structure of […]
“Black Steel” by Gwendolyn Brooks
February 7, 2019
Written by Taylor Henning On March 8, 1971, heavyweight champions Joe Frazier and Muhammad Ali faced off at Madison Square Garden in what was billed as the “Fight of the Century.” It was the first time that two undefeated boxers fought each other for the heavyweight title. In this first of three fights between the […]
Happy Birthday Jane Austen!
December 19, 2018
Happy (belated) birthday to Jane Austen! Jane Austen’s novels have remained in print almost non-stop since they first began appearing in 1811, and her fame and popularity have grown to iconic status, incorporating numerous adaptations of her novels in other mediums. During her lifetime her name was much less well known. She anonymously published her […]
Happy Birthday Emily Dickinson!
December 10, 2018
Born on December 10th, 1830, Emily Dickinson was a prolific and reclusive poet whose writing ranged from descriptive and observational to introspective and theoretical and touched on themes of flowers, death, and religion. Though very few of her works circulated during her life, over 1,800 poems hand-bound into “fascicles” were discovered in her room after […]
Women Authors: Louisa May Alcott and Gertrude Jekyll
November 29, 2018
This week, we will be highlighting four women authors from our collection in honor of their birthdays. These authors wrote on a range of subjects, from gardening to slavery, and show the many different areas in which the Rare Book and Manuscript Library holds important histories. Born on this day in 1832, Louisa May Alcott […]